+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 7, Issue 39, March 27, 2009.

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

++ISSUE 39 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: EVALUATION & TESTING.
06: EVENTS.
07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.
08: JAVASCRIPT.
09: MISCELLANEOUS.
10: NAVIGATION.
11: PHP.
12: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
13: TOOLS.
14: USABILITY.
15: XML.

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

[Contents ends.]


++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Accessibility to the Face
By Rob Foster.
"...think a little harder about the people using your product or experience and what it might be like for those who may not have all their faculties..."
http://northtemple.com/2009/03/24/accessibility-to-the-face

Leveling the Playing Field: We're all Differently Abled
By Joseph C. Dolson.
"Accessibility and web accessibility are often highlighted as issues for people with disabilities. This is no surprise, all things considered, given the common definition of accessibility. 'Disability' is, however, an almost meaninglessly broad term. Many of those who could be considered disabled would not choose to self-identify as disabled. 'Disability' is a label, and like any label, the members of the labeled group are diverse and may exhibit the label in unexpected ways..."
http://tinyurl.com/dztobn

Access Enablement or Accessibility?
By Adrian Sutton.
"...If you're asking yourself 'does my site meet WCAG 2.0?' you're doing it all wrong. You should be asking 'is my site accessible?' Just meeting WCAG won't necessarily make your site accessible - do it if that's what is required to get paid, but don't fool yourself into thinking that it's the real aim."
http://tinyurl.com/cy2anm

New Accessibility Guidelines Part II: Operability
By Joseph C. Dolson.
"This article addresses operability, and is part two in a series discussing the impact of WCAG 2.0 on your website..."
http://tinyurl.com/dytz2n

Practical Accessibility Tips with WCAG 2.0
By Andrew Tetlaw.
"...As far as building web sites is concerned, I'm with James Edwards when he says it's our job as web developers and designers to ensure content accessibility..."
http://tinyurl.com/d8pv2n

All Change for WCAG 2.0 Presentation
By Patrick H. Lauke.
Slides from Partick's talk are available.
http://www.splintered.co.uk/news/111/

Guideline 1.1. Provide Text Alternatives
By Olga Revilla.
"Provide text alternatives for any non-text content so that it can be changed into other forms people need, such as large print, braille, speech, symbols or simpler language..."
http://tinyurl.com/cphywv

Accessible
By Sam Ruby.
"This blog entry has an image with a text alternative. Who does it benefit?..."
http://intertwingly.net/blog/2009/03/20/Accessible

Open Source Accessibility - Making Programs and Content Available to Everyone
By Steve Lee.
"Accessibility means ensuring software and content is available to people with disabilities such as restricted movement,  blindness or learning difficulties and also for those with age related deteriorations like low vision or arthritis..."
http://tinyurl.com/dyds3s


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

IE8 Has Arrived
By Aaron Gustafson.
"As you may have heard, yesterday marked the official release of Internet Explorer 8. This new version of the oft-reviled browser has a completely rewritten rendering engine that was built, from the ground up, with the CSS 2.1 spec in hand. Improvements in this version include..."
http://www.webstandards.org/2009/03/20/ie8-has-arrived/

IE8 CSS Support and Rendering Mode
By Estelle Weyl.
"IE8 came out today. I appended the browser support blog post to include IE8 CSS Selector support. Most notable is that IE8 Supports all of CSS2.1 and passes the Acid 2 test..."
http://www.evotech.net/blog/2009/03/ie8-css-support/

CSS Drop Caps Without Unnecessary HTML Elements or Classes
By Neal Grosskopf.
"Drop capitals are commonly seen in newspapers or books. They can be identified by looking at the first letter of a paragraph or a page that is usually larger than the rest of the paragraph, bolded and often times a different font-family..."
http://www.nealgrosskopf.com/tech/thread.asp?pid=41

The Stupidest Style Sheet Name Ever
By Jens Meiert.
"This might irritate some people, however one of the last names you might want to pick for your style sheet is 'style.css'."
http://meiert.com/en/blog/20090325/stupidest-style-sheet-name/


+03: COLOR.

Designing for Color Impaired Users
By Wade Preston Shearer.
During some recent testing, we discovered that two of the most critical icons in our application failed for color-impaired users. My current project is an accounting application which contains many screens that utilize a common pattern for adding and removing. This pattern makes use of individual icons for each action. The icon for add is a plus symbol set within a green circle and the icon for remove is an 'x' set within a red circle.
http://northtemple.com/2009/02/07/designing-for-color-impair


+04: DREAMWEAVER.

The Demise of Dreamweaver Has Been Greatly Exaggerated 
By Kim Cavanaugh. 
"...I disagree with Mr. Arah would be a bit of an understatement as well. Let's take a look at some of his central arguments and see where he raises valid points and where his thinking goes off the rails..."
http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=91D75

 From Table-Based to Tableless Web Design with CSS - Part 1: CSS Basics
By Sheri German.
"Take the first steps towards CSS layouts and away from table-based layouts..."
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/articles/table_to_css_pt1.html


+05: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Recalled Behaviour is Not Fact
By Jessica Enders.
"When discussing survey forms, questions about behaviour are often called "factual questions" to distinguish them from questions about opinion or perceptions. The use of the term "factual" is a misnomer, however, and in this article we'll look at why..."
http://formulate.com.au/articles/recalled-behaviour-not-fact/

Why Requirements Stink
Scott Berkun.
"Requirements suck for two major reasons. 1. Requirements is not Design...2. Two many cooks..."
http://www.scottberkun.com/blog/2009/why-requirements-stink/

Testing Before You Design
By Wade Preston Shearer.
"In interaction design, we talk a lot about user testing. After we have put together some rough prototypes, we like to put them in front of our users, give them some scenarios, and observe them attempt to perform some predetermined tasks. Something that I think is often overlooked however is observing the user using their current system. Most of the time the applications that we are designing are replacing current systems-even if the 'system' isn't a software application and it is paramount that we understand it."
http://northtemple.com/2009/02/07/testing-before-you-design


+06: EVENTS.

WCAG 2.0 Accessibility Webinars for Flash and PDF
March 31, 2009.
April 1, 2009.
http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/?p=158
The first PDF & WCAG 2.0 webinar presented is available:
http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/?p=180

International Online Conference for Teaching and Learning
March 30-31, 2009.
Online.
http://www.internationalonlineconference.org/

Understanding WCAG 2.0 & Preparing Websites with Improved Accessibility
April 22, 2009.
Perth, Australia
http://www.webindustry.asn.au/ideas5/


+07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

Rapid Prototyping Tools
By Dan Harrelson.
"Prototypes as a design deliverable are on the rise, and for good reason. I am strong believer that prototyping helps us to design better experiences. We are working in a world of rich, dynamic interfaces, both on the web and on our devices. The experiences we design are interactive, responsive, and have emotion. Prototypes allow us to articulate the feeling and function of a design in a way that a wireframe does not. But how do you select the best prototyping tool for the job?..."
http://www.adaptivepath.com/blog/2009/03/24/rapid-prototyping-tools/

16 Design Tools for Prototyping and Wireframing
By Gary Barber.
"In recent years the number of tools available to help you document and design your web site has just exploded. It seems that we all need a wireframing or prototyping tool at our fingertips (at least in the design arena). So in order to save you the hard work required to find one, I've assembled this list. It can be expanded upon, so if you use an unlisted application, please let me know and I'll add it to the list."
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/tools-prototyping-wireframing/


+08: JAVASCRIPT.

Docking boxes (dbx) Version 3.0
By James Edwards.
"Docking boxes (dbx) adds animated drag 'n' drop, snap-to-grid, and show/hide-contents functionality to any group of elements."
http://www.brothercake.com/site/resources/scripts/dbx/


+09: MISCELLANEOUS.

Cynthia Waddell, Executive Director of the ICDRI Interview
By ehousestudio. 
"Cynthia Waddell, known globally for her tremendous achievements in the advancement of web accessibility, spoke with {e} this week. She reflects on her career path, her continuous efforts to bring civil rights to people with disabilities and clears up some common misconceptions about Section 508."
http://tinyurl.com/cw4rc3

Tim Bray on the Future of the Web
"Tim Bray talks about why he is not convinced with the buzz surrounding Rich Internet Applications and shares his ideas on Cloud Computing. He also expresses his opinion regarding the debate REST vs. WS-* and the future directions web technologies will be taking."
http://www.infoq.com/interviews/tim-bray-future-of-web

Don Norman: The Three Ways That Good Design Makes You Happy
"In this talk from 2003, design critic Don Norman turns his incisive eye toward beauty, fun, pleasure and emotion, as he looks at design that makes people happy. He names the three emotional cues that a well-designed product must hit to succeed."
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/don_norman_on_design_and_emotion.html

Let's Find a Way To Do This Right!
By Joe Dolson.
Most new projects come with some kind of baggage. An old version of the site with, shall we say, incredible code, an expensive CMS with rotten core HTML generation, tools the site owner has fallen in love with which fail to offer even a nod in the direction of accessibility, or demands for some kind of concept which only barely registers as possible within the boundaries of HTTP protocol.
http://tinyurl.com/d4bflm

How Many Webpages Can One Person Manage?
By Gerry McGovern.
"As Microsoft has found out, simply adding content to your website does not add value. Indeed, in some situations it actually destroys it. There is a real danger that the more webpages you add the worse your website becomes."
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2009/nt-2009-03-23-webpages-manage.htm


+10: NAVIGATION.

Mega Drop-Down Navigation Menus Work Well
By Jakob Nielsen.
"Big, two-dimensional drop-down panels group navigation options to eliminate scrolling and use typography, icons, and tooltips to explain the user's choices."
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mega-dropdown-menus.html

Modern Sitemap and Footer
By Nick La.
"Back in the old days, almost every website had a sitemap where they listed out all the pages. The purpose of the sitemap is to help visitors and search engine spiders to find information on the site. Now, a lot of modern websites have dropped the sitemap page, instead they place the sitemap in the footer area. I'm going to review 20 websites (from big corporation to small portfolio sites) who organized their footer cleverly to enhance usability..."
http://www.webdesignerwall.com/trends/modern-sitemap-and-footer/


+11: PHP.

The ABC's of PHP Part 3 - Basic Script Building in PHP
By Peter Shaw.
"In this episode we will look at some simple PHP syntax, and we'll write a couple of small scripts to get our feet wet, and get a feel for the language..."
http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/peter_shaw032309.php

Building a Simple Quiz
By Chris Coyier.
"I had to build a quiz for a client a little while ago. A few multiple choice questions, submit button, and it grades the quiz and tells you how you did. It's kinda dorky and really really simple PHP, but I figure it might be a good starter for some folks and a good primer in the basic theory of building a form in HTML and dealing with the data on another page with PHP..."
http://css-tricks.com/building-a-simple-quiz/

10 Useful PHP Tips Revisited
by Chris Shiflett and Sean Coates.
Last November Smashing Magazine posted an article titled '10 Advanced PHP Tips to Improve Your Programming', which was met with many negative comments. It seems that many of the tips were either incomplete, or directly giving bad advice. To remedy this, they have asked Chris Shiflett and Sean Coates to write a rebuttal article which they have done. This new article goes into detail of each of the previous 10 points, explains the issues with the previous suggestions, and then gives solid advice on what should be done.
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/03/24/10-useful-php-tips-revisited/


+12: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

How Educators Can Get the Most from WaSP InterAct
By Virginia DeBolt.
"Educators, this one's for you. The WaSP InterAct Curriculum Framework is now available. The curriculum is for high school, community college and universtity level teaching of  Web Design and Development. The focus is on using best practices and web standards to create students trained and capable in the skills most needed by industry..."
http://tinyurl.com/dysrsl

HTML5 Gallery
By Rich Clark.
"HTML5 gallery has two primary aims, the first is to showcase sites that use html5 for markup, so that we can see how people have interpreted the specification and how they've implemented it. This leads me on to the secondary aim which is to help people learn about html5 and how it should be used and how to implement it."
http://html5gallery.com/

Consequences
By John Foliot.
"...if the next generation programming language (that HTML5 seeks to be) wishes to be a more mature and robust language, it must also assume the responsibility of that maturity..."
http://john.foliot.ca/?p=65

Feeling Cynical about Web Accessibility and Standards?
By Jesse Rodgers.
"...Call it a long winter, annoying problems repeating themselves for years, and new experts making the same mistakes..."
http://tinyurl.com/cxgdev

Higher Standards for Web Standards
By Steven Martin.
"...But before touting a new standard or standards organization, vendors need to be clear about what specific issue is being solved and hold all parties accountable..."
http://tinyurl.com/c4jl95

When is the Right time for Accessibility?
By Derek Featherstone.
"...My feeling - at least right now - is that our job is to ensure that accessibility and accessibility architecture is kept in mind from the outset of a project/product/technological exploration, but not necessarily implemented at the outset..."
http://boxofchocolates.ca/archives/2009/03/22/the-right-time

Accessibility or Standards Compliance?
By Tom Babinszki.
"People often ask me what is more important, creating web sites which are fully accessible for people with disabilities, or ones which comply with local or national standards. There is a point to doing both, but probably a combination of the two works best..."
http://www.evengrounds.com/blog/accessibility-or-standards-compliance


+13: TOOLS.

Accessible Web Video: JW Player Controls
"JW Player Controls is the Flash-based JW FLV Player with a customized Accessibility plug-in, wrapped with JavaScript controls from the Dojo Toolkit, using SWFObject for Flash embedding, and mostly FamFamFam Silk Icons for toolbar icons."
http://www.wac.ohio-state.edu/examples/jwplayercontrols/

Easy SlideShare
By Chris Heilmann.
"Easy SlideShare is an alternative way of reading SlideShare presentations. We wanted to make sure that everybody who wants to read your presentations on-line can do so - regardless of age, ability and web proficiency..."
http://icant.co.uk/easy-slideshare/about/

Easy YouTube 
By Chris Heilmann.
"The Easy YouTube Player is an alternative way of watching YouTube videos. Instead of simulating YouTube we wanted to make sure that everybody who wants to see videos on-line can do so - regardless of age, ability and web proficiency..."
http://icant.co.uk/easy-youtube/docs/index.html


+14: USABILITY.

W3C Welcomes Feedback on Redesigned Web Site
By W3C.
"W3C invites public feedback on a beta release of a W3C site redesign. The new site features a harmonized design, simplified information architecture, new style for technical reports, and new content, including calendars and aggregated blogs. W3C welcomes feedback on the usability of the site, links to useful information, contributions of content to new pages, and bug fixes. Take a 10-minute screencast tour of the site, learn more about the redesign, and find out how you can help."
http://www.w3.org/News/2009#item37

The Elegance of Imperfection
By David Sherwin.
"Asymmetry, asperity, simplicity, modesty, intimacy, and the suggestion of a natural process: these attributes of elegant design may seem relevant only to a project's aesthetics. But the most successful web designs reflect these considerations at every stage, from idea to finished product. Bring heart to the experiences you create by infusing them with intelligence that transcends aesthetics and reflects the imperfection of the natural world."
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/theeleganceofimperfection

The 10 Most Common Reasons for Poor Usability - Part 1
By Damian Rees.
"...Here's our ten most common reasons for why a product has poor usability..."
http://tinyurl.com/ce7tsc

50 Swinish Ways to Annoy Web Users
By Chris Lake.
"I experienced a few issues this morning while browsing around on the web. I'm still amazed by some of the issues I chance upon in an average day, often on mainstream media websites..."
http://econsultancy.com/blog/3547-50-swinish-ways-to-annoy-web-users
 
White Space: How to Get it 'Right'
By Mark Boulton.
"Space is important in layout. Space can be created by content - such as text, images, lists, logos etc. - or it can be created by the space in-between content, called negative space, or whitespace. Space can be passive; a by-product of the layout process. Or, it can be active; there for a reason, to guide the user's eye, or help them make a decision..."
http://thinkvitamin.com/features/white-space-how-to-get-it-right/

Evolution vs Revolution - Changing your Site's Design
By Peter Merholz.
"I tend not to talk much about web design any more, but my attendance at IA Summit 2009 brought a thought to mind. I sat in Jared Spool's talk on 'Revealing Design Treasures from the Amazon' where he pointed out what others can learn from Amazon's design decisions."
http://www.peterme.com/?p=740


+15: XML.

X/HTML 5 Versus XHTML 2
The competition to become the next markup language for the Web is heating up. This article takes a look at what's cool and what's uncool about the competing technologies.
http://xhtml.com/en/future/x-html-5-versus-xhtml-2/


[Section one ends.]


++ SECTION TWO:

+16: 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.]