+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 7, Issue 32, February 6, 2009.

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: DREAMWEAVER.
04: EVENTS.
05: FLASH.
06: JAVASCRIPT.
07: MISCELLANEOUS.
08: NAVIGATION.
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.

Screen Reader Survey Results
By Jared Smith.
"The initial results of our survey of preferences of screen reader users are now available. With over 1100 respondents, these results provide a unique and detailed insight into screen reader users and web accessibility."
http://webaim.org/blog/screen-reader-survey-results/

Accessibility Basics
By Tom Hughes-Croucher.
"...in this article I'll now look at accessibility explicitly, so you can understand fully what it is, why it is important, how to ensure that sites are accessible, and what guidelines exist to define accessible sites..."
http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/25-accessibility-basics/

Accessibility Testing
By Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis.
"Web accessibility testing is a subset of usability testing where the users under consideration have disabilities that affect how they use the web. The end goal, in both usability and accessibility, is to discover how easily people can use a web site and feed that information back into improving future designs and implementations..."
http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/26-accessibility-testing/

Null alt Text
Web Accessibility Initiative Educational Outreach Thread Initiated by William Loughborough.
"So the classic argument becomes 'But what if the choice is between terrible poetry and silence?' That choice should be pre-settable within the screen reader, not an escape hatch for authors who suck at providing an alternative to any unwanted voicings. It's all in the hands of the authoring tool and the design of the assistive technology."
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-eo/2009JanMar/0030.html

Headings in HTML 5 and Accessibility
By Bruce Lawson.
"This description of headings was originally part of a post unveiling the part two redesign, but I'm splitting it out because there has been a lot of talk lately about headings in HTML 4 and 5..."
http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2009/headings-in-html-5-and-accessibility/

Captioning, Transcripts and a Teachable Moment
By John Foliot.
"...For those of you reading this and who are involved in teaching, alt media production or a related endeavor, I ask that maybe you help push that ball along as well. NASA has given us a great starting point, but we, accessibility advocates, need to help highlight that great start, and help other educators seize that start point and work it..."
http://webaim.org/discussion/mail_thread.php?thread=3761


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Headers, Footers, Columns, and Templates
By Ben Henick.
"...This article takes on broader focus; its purpose is to show the reader how to take the material covered so far, and use it to build a complete site template..."
http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/38-headers-footers-columns-templates/

How to Solve :first-child CSS Bug in IE 7
By Robert Nyman.
"...The key was the HTML comment preceding the first LI item, incorrectly interpreted by IE to be the first child element of the UL..."
http://tinyurl.com/dmp48s


+03: DREAMWEAVER.

Simple Styling With CSS
By Stephanie Sullivan.
"...The purpose of this article is to take you on the initial journey-one that gives you an idea of how easy it is to separate your content from its presentation. I'll show you techniques that reduce your page-load time and file size tremendously by using CSS to create background colors, borders, and font styling These techniques enable you to cut the images used in your web pages down to a minimum. The page you'll create isn't beautiful. It's silly and fun. But it will teach you techniques and give you ideas to create your own, much more attractive pages..."
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/articles/css_simple_styling.html


+04: EVENTS.

XML Prague 2009
March 21-22, 2009.
Prague, Czech Republic
http://www.xmlprague.cz/index.html

TechEd 2009 - The New Face of Technology
March 22-25, 2009.
Ontario, California, U.S.A.
http://www.techedevents.org/2009/

3d European eAccessibility Forum
March 30, 2009.
Paris, France
http://tinyurl.com/5r8enz

Internet User Experience 2009
March 30-April 2, 2009.
Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.A.
http://www.iue2009.com/

Mobile Usability
April 10, 2009 in Washington D.C., U.S.A.
May 22, 2009 in London United Kingdom.
June 27, 2009 in San Francisco, California, U.S.A.
August 1, 2009 in Sydney Australia.
http://www.nngroup.com/events/tutorials/mobile.html

CSS Mastery Workshop with Andy Budd
April 16, 2009.
Brighton, United Kingdom
http://clearleft.com/does/teach/css/

The John Slatin Access U
May 11-13, 2009.
Austin, Texas, U.S.A.
http://www.knowbility.org/conference/


+04: FLASH.

WebAIM Screen Reader Survey: A Closer Look at Flash and PDF Results
By Andrew Kirkpatrick.
"WebAIM released the results of a survey of screen reader users and the results are interesting for what they tell us about HTML use, but the commentary around user's thoughts on Flash content and PDF documents is of particular interest at Adobe. The results state that 71% of screen reader users responding feel that Flash content is very difficult (34%) or somewhat difficult (37%) to use, and 48% of screen reader users responding feel that PDF documents are very difficult (17%) or somewhat difficult (31%) to use. I think that it is worth putting some additional context around these numbers..."
http://tinyurl.com/ckxu8u


+06: JAVASCRIPT.

Validating WAI-ARIA in HTML and XHTML
By Roger Johansson.
"WAI-ARIA has great potential to help developers make the Web more accessible to people with disabilities, especially those who are vision impaired or cannot use a mouse. There is currently a problem with adding WAI-ARIA attributes to your HTML or XHTML markup though..."
http://tinyurl.com/cwyvny

The JavaScript Ultimate Reference
By James Edwards.
"The JavaScript Ultimate Reference is an ongoing project to create the most comprehensive and up-to-date reference for JavaScript programming, anywhere on the web or in print, a complement to the already-published HTML Reference and CSS Reference..."
http://www.brothercake.com/site/portfolio/jsur/

The DOM is a Mess
By John Resig
"I gave a talk last week at Yahoo (at the request of the YUI team) all about the DOM. I outlined some of the reasons why the current situation is such a mess, outline some strategies for working around it, and then give some examples of real world code that's being implemented in libraries today."
http://ejohn.org/blog/the-dom-is-a-mess/

Advanced Debugging with JavaScript
By Chris Mills.
"JavaScript debuggers help find and squash errors in code. To become an advanced debugger, you'll need to know about the tools available to you, the typical JavaScript debugging workflow, and code requirements for effective debugging. In this article, using a sample web application, Steen and Mills share advanced techniques for diagnosing and treating bugs."
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/advanceddebuggingwithjavascript

JavaScript Variable Scope: Local and Global Variables
By Estelle Weyl.
"In writing JavaScript functions, variable functions can trip you up. A common error is overwriting a global variable because the variable in a function didn't have local scope. If that last sentence didn't make any sense, then this article is for you..."
http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=4E137

Lots of new JavaScript tutorials at Opera's Web Standards Curriculum this week including ones by Christian Heilmann, Peter Paul Koch, Mike West, Stuart Langridge, Greg Schechter, and Robert Nyman.
http://tinyurl.com/d65426


+07: MISCELLANEOUS.

The Details That Matter
By Kevin Potts.
"We no longer lay out pages with composing sticks and straight edges, and design is no longer a trade position requiring a lengthy apprenticeship, but an eye for details is every bit as important today as it was in the early days of graphic arts. Learn the habits of successful designers, who think critically as well as creatively, and who see the forest while never losing sight of the trees."
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/thedetailsthatmatter

Toward 2^W --- Beyond Web-2.0: The Rest Of The Story
By T.V. Raman.
"The Web has evolved from global hypertext system to distributed platform for end-user interaction. Users access it from a variety of devices and rely on late binding of the user interface to produce a user experience that is best suited to a given usage context. With data moving from individual devices to the Web cloud, users today have ubiquitous access to their data. The separation of the user interface from the data being presented enables them to determine how they interact with the data. With data and interaction both becoming URL-addressable, the Web is now evolving toward enabling users to come together to collaborate in ad-hoc groups that can be created and dismantled with minimal overhead. Thus, a movement that started with the creation of three simple building blocks 'URL, HTTP, HTML' has evolved into the one platform that binds them all."
http://tinyurl.com/cxnz69


+08: NAVIGATION.

How Search Fits Into The Web Site Design Process
By Rob Garner.
"The important thing to remember here is that search should be a key consideration at every stage of the process, whether it is selecting a provider, setting requirements, producing comps, coding or site deployment."
http://tinyurl.com/aqg32b


+09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

This Week in HTML 5 - Episode 20
By Mark Pilgrim.
"The big news this week is the beginning of the non-normative section on rendering HTML documents."
http://blog.whatwg.org/this-week-in-html-5-episode-20

HTML 5 to the H1 Debate Rescue?
By Henny Swan.
"...What's interesting to see is that while HTML5 may have serious flaws with regards to accessibility in other areas it may be working to support accessible content in others. What is essential to its success however is that  screen reader vendors step up and work to include support for HTML5 to complement efforts being made by browsers as well as the web development community..."
http://www.iheni.com/html-5-to-the-h1-debate-rescue/


+10: TOOLS.

W3C Validator for MAC OSX with Experimental WAI-ARIA Support
By Steve Faulkner.
"...you can check your (X)HTML files containing ARIA attributes without them being flagged as errors. You can also check whether ARIA attributes and attribute values used are correct."
http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/?p=108

Easy YouTube Caption Creator - A Very Rough First 'Build'
By Ian Lloyd.
"...I've put together a little tool that lets me create a caption file - suitable for YouTube - in what I think is a quite easy manner..."
http://tinyurl.com/ddg8p9

Community Captioner
By Project Possibility.
"Our project concept is an open source, community-driven online video closed captioning tool..."
http://www.projectpossibility.org/viewProject.php?id=10


+11: USABILITY.

Top 10 Higher-Ed Web Design Mistakes in 140
By Stewart Foss.
"While working on the book I had an idea for a presentation..."
http://www.edustyle.net/blog/?p=266

Getting Your Website Right - Uses and Misuses of Web Design Patterns
By Nathan Langley.
"...In the instances where you decide that it is appropriate put UI patterns into practice, you must ensure that you understand the context in which the pattern was conceived and its suitability for the proposed use. Without this you will not realize the potential of patterns to allow you to focus on more business critical design."
http://tinyurl.com/cpzhtv

Are You Focusing Too Much on Your Home Page?
By Christian Watson.
"...Your home page is Like a hotel lobby...the lobby should make it easy for the visitor to orient themselves...However, hotels are ultimately judged by the quality of their rooms...."
http://www.smileycat.com/miaow/archives/001514.php


[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.]