[webdev] Web Design Update: April 21, 2006

Fri Apr 21 06:32:05 CDT 2006

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 4, Issue 44, April 21, 2006.

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

++ISSUE 44 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: SITES & BLOGS.
13: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
14: TOOLS.
15: USABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Web Accessibility Policies (and Pseudo Policies) in Post secondary 
Institutions
By WebAIM.
"This updated list represents a broad sampling of web accessibility 
policies across the United States and other regions around the world. 
Many of these policies can be more accurately described as suggestions, 
since many institutions do not have any binding formal policy. See how 
your web accessibility policy compares, or use these as a springboard 
to create your own."
http://webaim.org/coordination/policies/postsec/

Involving Users in Web Accessibility Evaluation
By Shawn Lawton Henry.
"Web accessibility evaluation often focuses on evaluating conformance 
to accessibility standards, such as the Web Content Accessibility 
Guidelines (WCAG). Broadening evaluation to involve people with 
disabilities helps better understand accessibility issues and implement 
more effective accessibility solutions."
http://www.w3.org/WAI/eval/users

A More Accessible Map
By Seth Duffey.
"Nifty web maps powered by Google and Yahoo! APIs are all the rage. And 
rage is what a visually impaired user may feel when trying to use them. 
Is there a way to make beautiful web maps accessible? In a word, yes."
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/cssmaps

Tate Online Wins Accessibility Award
By Anna Lagerkvist.
"i-Map, the arts resource for visually impaired people developed by 
Tate Online and BT, has won a web accessibility award. The judges 
awarded Tate Online the 2006 Jodi Award for Excellence in Museum, 
Library and Archive Web Accessibility, because the site was a "world 
leader in making online collections accessible to blind and partially 
sighted people...The site incorporates audio content so visitors can 
hear detailed descriptions of each work as well as watch full screen 
animations, which highlight and simplify key aspects of the included 
works..."
http://tinyurl.com/k8ja9

Google Releases Audio CAPTCHA
By Matt Bailey.
"Google has now unveiled the Audio CAPTCHA for blind and low-vision 
users for many of the Google services. Gmail, Google Groups and the 
Google Account for the homepage. Users simply have to click the link 
and type the numbers they hear."
http://tinyurl.com/mt7v3

Indicating Language Choice: Flags, Text, Both, Neither?
By Roger Johansson.
"At the office we recently had a bit of a discussion about how language 
choice should be indicated on the web. The specific case we were 
debating is when a site uses one primary language and contains sections 
of information in one or several other languages. Visitors who want to 
access the information in one of the secondary languages have to 
somehow be made aware that they can select another language. This is 
assuming the site does not use content negotiation to automatically 
display information in the visitor's preferred language (which is a bad 
idea anyway). Four options come to mind..."
http://tinyurl.com/fdgly

Accessible Business Online
By Alexandra Graham.
"It's about more than disabled users, it's an overall concept to apply 
to the web, web design as a whole and you need to build it into your 
development process as opposed to actually adding it on, because you 
just do it straight through the whole time and you make that a part of 
your web sites, then you're just going to be making better web sites 
anyway so clients are more likely to choose you. Make sure you're 
selling the features, don't talk in developer speak, like I said at the 
beginning, they don't care about how you made it accessible, just as 
long as people can use it. So make sure it's that usability that you're 
selling when you're talking to the clients. You just make the good web 
sites, don't make a big deal out of it to the clients, it's something 
that matters to developers because it's something that we do. But 
again, it's just a part of the end product, it's not anything that will 
really bother your client."
http://kay.zombiecoder.com/wsg/wsg2006-03-30-Alex_Graham.html

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Getting Fieldset Backgrounds and Legends to Behave in IE
By Matt Heerem.
"I'm sure someone has posted on this issue before I just haven't found 
an answer I'm looking for. Jeff Croft has a close answer, but he is 
trying to solve a different problem. I built off of his exploration for 
this solution. The 'problem' occurs when you are building a form with a 
fieldset tag and a legend tag, and then style the fieldset with a 
background color like so..."
http://tinyurl.com/qsmfy

Projecting Your CSS
By Jon Christopher.
"I can remember setting up my first stylesheet and being truly 
impressed with the power of CSS. While I was still learning the 
language and implementation, I came across the concept of print 
stylesheets. The fact that you could present a completely different 
style for print was mind blowing for me. It made so much sense all at 
once and was a great thing to learn. What's also great is the ability 
to style for other media, such as handheld devices and projectors. Did 
you know that there are 7 total media types you can style for?"
http://www.mondaybynoon.com/2006/04/17/projecting-your-css/

+03: COLOR.

Accessible Colors
By Menghini Calderon Fabrizio Antonio.
"W3C assert that the formula (they have developed for testing for 
accessible color) has been tested using a sample of 149 volunteers 
where 80% of them reported some visual impairment (acuity problems, 
myopia, hypermetropia, presbyopia). However there are some problems 
that invalidate the results obtained."
http://www.internotredici.com/article/accessiblecolors

+04: DREAMWEAVER.

Precisely Positioning div Tags in Your Page From Design View
By Adrian Senior.
"In this article we will look at how you can insert div tags into your 
code, precisely. We will do this from Dreamweaver's design view by 
making good use of the insert div tag function that can be found on the 
insert bar."
http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=07BC6

Styling Forms with CSS - Part 1: Accessibility and Form Element Styles
By Adrian Senior.
"Learn to create accessible forms using the latest CSS techniques 
instead of tables."
http://tinyurl.com/rbxxm

Styling Forms with CSS - Part 2: CSS-Structured Forms
By Adrian Senior.
"In Part 2 of this series, you will build on this knowledge and explore 
more advanced methods of positioning your form elements using CSS. You 
can use the HTML and CSS documents you created in Part 1 or else 
download the files from the sample download link and continue with Part 
2."
http://tinyurl.com/prrc7

+05: EVALUATION & TESTING.

F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content
By Jakob Nielsen.
"Eyetracking visualizations show that users often read Web pages in an 
F-shaped pattern: two horizontal stripes followed by a vertical stripe. 
F for fast. That's how users read your precious content. In a few 
seconds, their eyes move at amazing speeds across your website's words 
in a pattern that's very different from what you learned in school."
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html

Usability Testing Best Practices: An Interview with Rolf Molich
By Christine Perfetti.
"You may have never heard of Rolf Molich. Yet, if you've done any 
usability testing, design evaluations, or heuristic inspections, then 
you've been affected by his pioneering work. Since entering the field 
in 1983, Rolf has produced some of the most impressive and 
forward-thinking research on effective discount usability techniques. 
Two of Rolf's more renowned contributions include the co-invention of 
the Heuristic Inspection process with Jakob Nielsen and the more recent 
CUE (Comparative Usability Evaluation) studies..."
http://www.uie.com/events/uiconf/2006/articles/molich_interview/

+06: EVENTS.

Internet Research 7.0: Internet Convergences
International and Interdisciplinary Conference of the Association of 
Internet Researchers
September 28-30, 2006.
Brisbane, Australia
http://conferences.aoir.org/index.php?cf=5

WWW/Internet 2006
October 5-8, 2006.
Murcia, Spain
http://www.iadis.org/icwi2006/

+07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

Information Architecture and Findability
By Russell Wilson.
"Peter Morville, co-author of Information Architecture for the World 
Wide Web with Lou Rosenfeld and author of Ambient Findability, 
presented a very informative day-long lecture on the subject of 
information architecture (IA). He discussed many basic concepts as well 
as best practices, so his presentation would appeal to both beginner 
and intermediate IAs."
http://www.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000086.php

Information Architecture Success Story: the Development of 
www.plainlanguage.gov
By Thom Haller.
"In Fall 2002 I was working with IA students at Johns Hopkins 
University who were seeking strategies to "engineer" information to 
improve human performance. We were studying research-based heuristics 
from the field and needed a real-life client. The government's plain 
language site seemed ripe for reshaping."
http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Apr-06/haller.html

+08: JAVASCRIPT.

JavaScript 101 - Part 1: The Basics
By Rob Williams.
"The purpose of this series of articles is to introduce newcomers to 
the concepts and fundamentals of JavaScript, so that you can begin to 
leverage the power of this technology in your own web projects."
http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=74116

Mastering Ajax, Part 3: Advanced Requests and Responses in Ajax
By Brett McLaughlin.
"For many Web developers, making simple requests and receiving simple 
responses is all they'll ever need, but for developers who want to 
master Ajax, a complete understanding of HTTP status codes, ready 
states, and the XMLHttpRequest object is required. In this article, 
Brett McLaughlin will show you the different status codes and 
demonstrate how browsers handle each and he will showcase the 
lesser-used HTTP requests that you can make with Ajax."
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-ajaxintro3/

Mastering Ajax, Part 4: Exploiting DOM for Web Response
By Brett McLaughlin.
"The great divide between programmers (who work with back-end 
applications) and Web programmers (who spend their time writing HTML, 
CSS, and JavaScript) is long standing. However, the Document Object 
Model (DOM) bridges the chasm and makes working with both XML on the 
back end and HTML on the front end possible and an effective tool. In 
this article, Brett McLaughlin introduces the Document Object Model, 
explains its use in Web pages, and starts to explore its usage from 
JavaScript."
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/library/wa-ajaxintro4/

Mastering Ajax, Part 5: Manipulate the DOM
By Brett McLaughlin.
"Learn how to create, remove, and change the parts of a DOM tree, and 
take the next step toward updating your Web pages on the fly!"
http://tinyurl.com/paz7x

Comet: Low Latency Data for the Browser
By Alex Russell.
Comet is different from Ajax in the way messages are passed between the 
server and client. Instead of occasionally polling the server, Comet 
applications keep a open line of communication with the server, whereby 
the server pushes data to the client.
http://alex.dojotoolkit.org/?p=545

+09: MISCELLANEOUS.

Steve Smith Interview
By WaSP Education Task.
"Steve Smith, lead Web developer with the University of Notre Dame Web 
Group, believes in 'finding joy in small steps' when it comes 
advocating standards. After all, it's no small feat to introduce change 
within the greater machine of an educational institution. How does 
Steve and his team face up to the challenge? Steve finds some time 
amidst his flurry of evangelist and educational activities to tell us a 
little more about their strategies..."
http://www.webstandards.org/action/edutf/interviews/smith/

+10: NAVIGATION.

Of Cereal and Search: Improving Customer Experience with Selective 
Search Engine Optimization
By Eric G. Myers.
"If your site is like most, there are probably places that are better 
for users to enter than others. Of course, it all depends on the user's 
goal. This is exactly why you need to customize your optimization 
efforts for each individual page of your web site. Some pages are going 
to require (and deserve) a lot more effort. These are the pages you 
really want to put front and center for your users to find."
http://tinyurl.com/gp3sq

How Important is ALT Text In Search Engine Optimization?
By Robin Nobles.
"...I've been recommending to my online and offline SEO students for a 
long time that they needed to use ALT text in the manner in which it 
was designed to be used by the W3C..."
http://www.link101.com/2006/04/how-important-is-alt-text-in-search.html

Don't Forget to Add the Tax(onomy)
By Cathy McKnight.
"So what is taxonomy? How does it differ from information architecture? 
And how do you create an effective taxonomy for a successful intranet?"
http://tinyurl.com/kngof

+11: PHP.

PHP vs perl
By Justin Silverton.
"PHP and perl are both powerful languages used successfully in a server 
environment. Here are some brief differences between the two languages."
http://blinduser.blogspot.com/2006/04/php-vs-perl.html

+12: SITES & BLOGS.

Bite Size Standards
By John Oxton et al.
"Bite Size Standards aims to offer concise web development tutorials, 
tips and tricks. Written by designers and developers who are passionate 
about web standards."
http://bitesizestandards.com/

+13: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

Minnesota Standards Bill Could Affect Microsoft Word, Adobe
By W. David Gardner.
"In conducting a theoretical search of the Minnesota state Web site, 
Nesbitt observed that most of the results 'come back as either HTML, 
PDF, or MS Word. The problem is that the latter two formats are owned 
by entities that could go out of business, charge significantly, make 
unannounced changes, sue others for creating similar technologies, act 
as a monopoly, or abort a product offering altogether. In those 
instances, there is very little the State could do about it.'"
http://www.techweb.com/wire/software/186100201

+13: TOOLS.

X-Ray
By Stuart Robertson.
This Firefox extension lets you to see the markup of a page without 
viewing source, which can be useful when debugging. It's also both fun 
and educational to use X-Ray to explore the markup used on other 
people's sites.
http://www.designmeme.com/2006/01/06/new-firefox-extension-x-ray/

Colour Contrast Analyser 1.1
By Steve Faulkner.
"...a primarily a tool for checking foreground and  background colour 
combinations to determine if they provide good colour visibility. It 
also contains functionality to create simulations of certain visual 
conditions such as colour blindness...System Requirements: Microsoft 
Windows..."
http://www.wat-c.org/tools/CCA/1.1/index.html

+14: USABILITY.

Usability Book of Knowledge
By Usability Professionals Association.
"The Usability Body of Knowledge (BoK) project is dedicated to creating 
a living reference that represents the collective knowledge of the 
usability profession. Preliminary work has started, but there is more 
to do. This website introduces the subject areas that will eventually 
be included in the Usability Body of Knowledge and a preview of what is 
to come."
http://www.usabilitybok.org/

Making Popular Layout Decisions
By Eric Meyer.
"Every time you make a layout decision - fluid vs fixed, scaled vs 
percentage, a few more people hate you. How do you make the right 
decisions and when?"
http://tinyurl.com/znqm9

[Section one ends.]

++ SECTION TWO:

+15: 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 
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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 
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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 at d.umn.edu

[Issue ends.]