[webdev] Web Design Update: October 19, 2007

Fri Oct 19 06:23:24 CDT 2007

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 6, Issue 17, October 19, 2007.

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

++ISSUE 17 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: EVALUATION & TESTING.
05: EVENTS.
06: JAVASCRIPT.
07: MISCELLANEOUS.
08: NAVIGATION.
08: PHP.
10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
11: TOOLS.
12: USABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Screen Readers and display:none
By Gez Lemon.
"...there are certain circumstances where content hidden with display: 
none is announced by JAWS and Window-Eyes. The circumstances are 
explained in this article, but it is always better to position content 
aimed at providing context for screen reader users off-screen, as 
content hidden with display: none should remain hidden..."
http://juicystudio.com/article/screen-readers-display-none.php

Freedom Scientific Says No to Access for Deaf People
By Ron Graham.
"...I've looked over the page and there are no transcripts available to 
provide the company's deaf customers with the material covered in their 
podcasts...I once coined the phrase, 'If you're not including somebody, 
then you're excluding them.' That statement is true here. Freedom 
Scientific is excluding their deaf consumers. When it comes to 
podcasts, Freedom Scientific, a company that is recognized for their 
ability to provide access throws up a big, flashing sign that reads, 
'No deaf people allowed'."
http://tinyurl.com/27ukvn

Videos on Computer Accessibility
By AssistiveWare.
An assortment of videos that show how people with various disabilities 
use assistive technology with their computers.
http://www.assistiveware.com/videos.php

All UK Government Web Sites Must Be WCAG AA Compliant
By Brian Kelly.
"The UK Government has published a Public consultation on Delivering 
Inclusive Websites document (TG102). This document (available in MS 
Word and PDF formats) states that all government Web sites must comply 
with the WCAG AA guidelines by December 2008. And failure to comply 
will result in the withdrawal of the .gov.uk domain..."
http://tinyurl.com/2bzwe4

Better Connected, Better Results: Top Tips For Titles
By Ann McMeekin.
"Earlier this year, Bim wrote very eloquently on the subject of Too 
much accessibility: TITLE attributes, which, if you haven't read it, or 
don't remember what it says, is worth taking a couple of minutes to 
read over. In the run up to the annual Better Connected survey, I 
thought it was worth a quick reminder of the issues, and a few top tips 
to help you make sure you're not straying off the accessibility path..."
http://tinyurl.com/ywwu2g

Why Accessibility? Because It's Our Job!
James Edwards.
"...If we call ourselves professionals, we owe it to our clients, their 
clients, and ourselves, to do our job properly. A chef must care about 
health, a builder must care about safety, and we must care about 
accessibility."
http://tinyurl.com/2kox5u

Ignorance and Inspiration
By Jeremy Keith.
"The topic of accessibility on the Web is, for any professional 
developer, an important topic. While there are differing degrees of 
knowledge and experience when it comes to Web accessibility, I was 
under the impression that it is generally acknowledged as being a good 
thing. Then the Target lawsuit came along. The overwhelming response 
was from ignorant, ill-informed people was that this was a frivolous 
lawsuit-an example of political correctness gone mad. What really 
depressed me was reading those opinions in the Sitepoint forum, the 
kind of place where you would expect Web professionals to congregate. 
Ignorance and greed were the order of the day.."
http://adactio.com/journal/1359/

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

CSS Positioning: Three Specs Better than One?
By Kevin Yank.
"One of the areas in which CSS 3 will introduce a lot of new features 
is page layout. This is widely considered to be a good thing. But with 
the W3C having just announced that there will be two separate modules 
for page layout in CSS 3, the standards may be asking too much of 
browser developers..."
http://tinyurl.com/2ec498

CSS Eleven
"CSS Eleven is an international group of visual web designers and 
developers who are committed to helping the W3C's CSS Working Group to 
better deliver the tools that are needed to design tomorrow's web..."
http://csseleven.com/

CSS Syntax in Graph
By R. J. Koppes.
"Here are some drawings of what the CSS syntax is about. In words, it 
can be found here for CSS 2.1 and here for CSS 3. I tried to catch 
these rather abstract descriptions into the images displayed below."
http://www.rikkertkoppes.com/thoughts/css-syntax/

Don't Over-Specify Your CSS Code
By Robert Nyman.
"...over-specifying the CSS is usually a bad thing. It leads to the 
usage of !important remarks all over, since people have a hard time 
finding why a style is applied, or can't find a proper way of 
specifying it better to just override the previous style. Even though 
Firebug has made it a lot easier to find inheritance and all styles 
applied to an element, there's still seldom any need to as specific as 
most tend to be when writing CSS code..."
http://www.robertnyman.com/2007/10/18/dont-over-specify-your-css-code/

+03: DREAMWEAVER.

New CSS Features in DW CS3
By Virginia DeBolt.
"I gave a presentation for my local Adobe Users Group this week...
I'm making the presentation available to teachers. It is not meant to 
be used in a browser, but presented in a classroom in Dreamweaver. I 
added a link to a zip file to the presentation, so you can download the 
whole thing and use it in Dreamweaver in your own classroom. There is a 
readme included in the zip file that explains a bit about how to show 
the new CSS features in Dreamweaver CS3 while doing a classroom demo in 
Dreamweaver. I'd love your feedback if you use the presentation."
http://tinyurl.com/23dce5

+04: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Multiple-User Simultaneous Testing (MUST)
By Jakob Nielsen.
"Testing 5-10 users at once lets you conduct large-scale usability 
testing and still meet your deadlines."
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/multiple-user-testing.html

Demystifying Data Analysis
By Rachel Hinman.
"...having a process that you can clearly communicate is a powerful 
skill. It allows people to engage with your work on a deeper level 
because you can show both the insights and implications you've 
discovered as well as the work you've done to get there. Process gives 
your team a road map to follow, making collaboration easier. In 
addition, it builds confidence within your organization for your 
effort, ensuring the hard work you've done won't be dismissed."
http://www.adaptivepath.com/ideas/essays/archives/000839.php

+05: EVENTS.

WebBuilder 2.0
December 3, 2007.
Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.A.
http://www.ftponline.com/conferences/webbuilder/2007/

Web Directions North
January 28 - February 2, 2008.
Vancouver, Canada.
http://north08.webdirections.org/

WritersUA Conference for Software User Assistance
March 16-19, 2008.
Portland, Oregon, U.S.A.
http://www.writersua.com/ohc/

IA Summit 2008
April 10, 2008.
Miami, Florida, U.S.A.
http://www.iasummit.org/2008/

+06: JAVASCRIPT.

Autopopulating Text Input Fields With JavaScript
By Roger Johansson.
"For both accessibility and usability reasons, all input fields and 
other form controls except buttons should have an associated label that 
clearly states what the purpose of the control is, or what kind of 
input the user is expected to fill it with..."
http://tinyurl.com/yp7wwg

Object-Oriented JavaScript
By Cristian Darie, Bogdan Brinzarea.
"This week we cover OOP (Object-Oriented Programming) and how it 
relates to JavaScript. Topics covered include: what encapsulation, 
inheritance and polymorphism mean, how JavaScript functions work, how 
to implement inheritance using closures, prototypes and more."
http://tinyurl.com/23brrb

Accessibility and Usability Issues with AJAX
By Joe Dolson.
"This is not a technical article. You will not learn how to code AJAX 
by reading this; either in an accessible and usable fashion or 
otherwise. This is a conceptual article. It will run through basic 
user-interface issues with AJAX (and other rich media). These are the 
reasons that AJAX functionality can be a problem for users - if you 
consider these issues carefully during development, it should greatly 
enhance the usability of your end product..."
http://tinyurl.com/2633ob

+07: MISCELLANEOUS.

Andy Clarke Interview on the CSS Eleven
By Peter Gasston
"The announcement of the formation of the CSS Eleven has caused quite a 
stir in the web development community, with a few questions raised over 
the self-appointed nature of the group and the way the announcement has 
been presented. One thing that everyone agrees on, however, is that 
there's a clear and obvious need for their existence. We spoke to Andy 
Clarke, respected designer and author, who announced the group's 
formation (and explained it further here), and asked him a few 
questions about what we can expect from the CSS Eleven..."
http://www.css3.info/interview-andy-clarke-on-the-css-eleven/

Adrian Holovaty Interview on Mashups and Microformats
By Matthew Magain.
"t the Web Directions South conference, I sat down with Adrian 
Holovaty, the creator of chicagocrime.org, the very first Google Maps 
mashup, and co-creator of the Django framework. I was keen to get his 
unique perspective on the notion of privacy online, the potential for 
structured data on the Web, and, of course, his latest venture..."
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/holovaty-mashups-microformats

How to Disarm 10 Difficult Client Observations/Requests
By Eric Karjaluoto.
Article on how to work with clients.
http://www.ideasonideas.com/2007/10/disarm-10-difficult-requests/

Findings From the Web Design Survey
By A List Apart Staff.
"...The findings we present here have never been seen before, because 
until now, no one has ever conducted public research to learn the facts 
of our profession. This report is not the last word on web work; it is 
only the beginning of a long conversation. Read, reflect, and let us 
hear from you..."
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/2007surveyresults

+08: NAVIGATION.

Amazon.com Soon To Launch New Navigation
By Jared Spool.
"We're getting reports from folks that Amazon is about to roll out a 
new navigation scheme. Some people already are part of their test 
audience and now seeing it.."
http://tinyurl.com/2ggnrt

Optimizing Midstream Usability
By Peter J. Meyers.
"... As more and more visitors land on sites directly from search, many 
of those visitors are landing on 'deep' pages. As I argued previously, 
this is a good thing, but it raises some interesting challenges for 
usability. How do you best serve users who hit your site "midstream"? 
Optimizing for midstream usability means telling people where they are, 
how they got there, and where else they can go..."
http://www.usereffect.com/topic/optimizing-midstream-usability

+09: PHP.

PHP for Contact Forms
By Matthew Pennell.
"This week, Digital Web's own Matthew Pennell steps forward to offer 
concrete, safe PHP for website contact forms. In 'Building a 
Bulletproof Contact Form with PHP', Matthew covers the basics of simple 
code and smart security."
http://www.digital-web.com/articles/bulletproof_contact_form_with_php/

+10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

Ten Checkpoints of a Web Standards Based Curriculum
By Virginia DeBolt.
"I presented this at HighEdWebDev 2007 today. It was presented as a 
powerpoint presentation. My narrative explained that this presentation 
was mainly about what sort of student learning outcomes I would expect 
to see in an institution where web standards were part of the 
curriculum. I did touch on a couple of important overall considerations 
as well. I have captured only the slides and converted them into a 
movie. There is no sound. Please return to this post if you have 
comments or questions."
http://tinyurl.com/yrgxu7

Semantic Brevity
By Jeremy Keith.
"When I write here at adactio.com, I often sprinkle in some 
microformats. As I wrote in Natural Language hCard, I've developed a 
sense of smell for microformats..."
http://adactio.com/journal/1358

Improve Your Forms Using HTML5
By Anne van Kesteren.
"HTML hasn't really been updated since HTML version 4 was released back 
in 1998. However, the WHATWG community has been working on HTML since 
2004 and this will hopefully result in some much needed improvements. 
This article shows some of the new functionality of the proposed form 
chapter of HTML5: Web Forms 2. (Opera has an experimental 
implementation of Web Forms 2 so if you want you can try out some of 
the examples listed here.)..."
http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/improve-your-forms-using-html5/

An HTML5-style 'Google Suggest'
By Anne van Kesteren.
"The features discussed in this article are part of the Web Forms 2 
specification, which will in due course be integrated into the HTML5 
draft. (You will need a recent Opera build, preferably 9.5, to play 
with the examples the way they are intended. Bleeding edge requires 
browser disclaimers unfortunately.)..."
http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/an-html5-style-google-suggest/

+11: TOOLS.

Validator S.A.C. (Stand Alone Complex)
By Habilis.
A stand-alone, easy to install, version of the W3C's HTML / XHTML 
Markup Validator for Mac OS X.
http://habilis.net/validator-sac/

+12: USABILITY.

Web Form Design in the Wild, Part II
By Luke Wroblewski.
"Whenever I'm asked why I obsess over the details of Web forms, I 
quickly respond, "It's because form design really matters..."
http://www.uie.com/articles/form_design_wild/

[Section one ends.]

++ SECTION TWO:

+13: 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.

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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.]