[webdev] Web Design Update: February 29, 2008

Laura Carlson lcarlson at d.umn.edu
Fri Feb 29 06:18:37 CST 2008 

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 6, Issue 36, February 29, 2008.

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

++ISSUE 49 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: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.
07: JAVASCRIPT.
08: MISCELLANEOUS.
09: NAVIGATION.
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.

Alt in HTML5 - Moving Forward
By Steve Faulkner.
"As a result of some sage advice from Jason White (a W3C veteran), 
amongst others.  Myself, Laura Carlson and Josh O Connor have started 
to attend the HTML WG weekly teleconferences. Our first meeting has 
already yielded some positive progress..."
http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/?p=39

WCAG Samurai
By Joe Clark with an Independent Group of Developers.
"As of 26 February 2008, the WCAG Samurai errata for Web Content 
Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 are available."
http://wcagsamurai.org/

Don't Lose Your Head Over Accessibility
By Blair Millen.
"In my work at Accessites.org and GAWDS I get to scrutinize an awful 
lot of sites. And one issue I see time and time again is 
poorly-implemented images, or more specifically, misuse of Image 
Replacement (IR) and badly styled images. There's clearly some 
confusion (even among many web professionals) about best practices for 
adding images to your site, so hopefully this short post will help to 
clear things up."
http://tinyurl.com/yt855n


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

How to Create Beautiful and Elegant HTML Lists Using CSS
By Kaspars Dambis.
"This article will explain and show you how to style lists inside blog 
posts, articles or other basic HTML documents..."
http://tinyurl.com/ywyfpt

Break Up a List in Columns
By Natalie Jost.
"I was working on my Wordpress development blog today and in my 
contents I wanted to be able to list the items in columns instead of 
one long list. This would be fine for a <ul> but I'm using an <ol> 
because it makes more sense for a table of contents. The problem is, 
how do you split up the ol into 2 or 3 sections and still retain the 
count? Here's how I did it..."
http://www.standardsforlife.com/break-up-a-list-in-columns/

Five Web 2.0 CSS Menu Tutorials
By Antonio Lupetti.
"This post is a compilation of the most visited posts on my Blog about 
"web design" topic. It includes five CSS menu tutorials inspired to 
some Web 2.0 sites with round corners, scriptaculous and ajax 
effects..."
http://woork.blogspot.com/2008/02/five-web-20-css-menu-tutorials.html

Margins and Paddings, Part 1 - an Introduction
By Niels Matthijs.
"When I started working with css, one of the first things I needed to 
know was how I was supposed to create whitespace. Before I learned my 
way around css, I (ab)used spaces and br tags to create whitespace on 
the pages I made. Not really the way to go. So I started looking around 
and hit margins and paddings. And thus a confusing journey began..."
http://www.onderhond.com/blog/work/margins-paddings-introduction

Get Specific with Your CSS Styles
By Paul O'Brien.
"Specificity is a word that's even more difficult to understand than it 
is to pronounce! But until you've mastered the concept, you'll never 
really understand how your CSS style rules are being applied. In this 
article, Paul presents the facts about specificity clearly, so you can 
apply them to your own CSS today..."
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/get-specific-css-styles


+03: DREAMWEAVER.

CS3 Video Tutorial - Building a Web Page
By Stefan Mischook.
http://tinyurl.com/266j8u

CS3 Video Tutorial - The Three Editing Modes
By Stefan Mischook.
http://tinyurl.com/yorbqe


+04: EVALUATION & TESTING.

I Repeat - Do Not Listen to Your Users
By Jeff Atwood.
"Listening to users is a tricky thing. Users often don't know what they 
want, and even if they did, the communication is likely to get garbled 
somewhere between them and you. By no means should you ignore your 
users, though. Most people will silently and forever walk away if your 
software or website doesn't meet their needs. The users who care enough 
to give you feedback deserve your attention and respect. They're 
essentially taking it upon themselves to design your product. If you 
don't listen attentively and politely respond to all customer feedback, 
you're setting yourself up for eventual failure. It's rude not to 
listen to your users. So how do we reconcile this with the first rule 
of usability-- Don't Listen to Users? "
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001063.html


+05: EVENTS.

Women Who Tech
A TeleSummit for Women in Technology
March 31, 2008.
http://www.womenwhotech.com/

The Highland Fling 2008 - The Browser and Beyond
April 3, 2008.
Edinburgh, Scotland
http://thehighlandfling.com/

Information Architecture Essentials
April 9, 2008.
Sydney, Australia.
http://www.steptwo.com.au/seminars/080409/

Web 2.0 Expo
April 22-25, 2008 in San Francisco, California, U.S.A.
September 16-19, 2008 in New York, New York, U.S.A.
http://en.oreilly.com/webexsf2008/public/content/home

Accessibility 2.0: a million flowers bloom
April 25, 2008.
London, United Kingdom.
http://www.abilitynet.org.uk/accessibility2/index.html

@media 2008 "CSS Mastery" Workshop
May 21, 2008.
San Francisco, California, U.S.A.
http://www.vivabit.com/atmedia2008/sanfrancisco/workshop/

WebVisions 2008
May 22-23 2008.
Portland, Oregon, U.S.A.
http://www.webvisionsevent.com/


+06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

Designing Your Information Architecture for Content Reuse: Five Best 
Practices
By Amber Swope.
"...When considering the implementation of a reuse strategy, consider 
the following five best practices..."
http://tinyurl.com/yuppsq


+07: JAVASCRIPT.

How JavaScript Timers Work
By John Resig.
"At a fundamental level it's important to understand how JavaScript 
timers work. Often times they behave unintuitively because of the 
single thread which they are in. Let's start by examining the three 
functions that we have access to with which to construct and manipulate 
timers..."
http://ejohn.org/blog/how-javascript-timers-work/

JavaScript Performance Stack
By John Resig.
"Something that's frequently befuddled is the differentiation between 
where JavaScript is executing and where performance hits are taking 
place. The difficulty is related to the fact that many aspects of a 
browser engine are reliant upon many others causing their performance 
issues to be constantly intertwined. To attempt to explain this 
particular inter-relationship I've created a simplified diagram..."
http://ejohn.org/blog/javascript-performance-stack/


+08: MISCELLANEOUS.

Interview: Roger and Molly: Webstock New Zealand
By Molly E. Holzschlag.
"I like this interview! It runs a bit long but Roger made me feel so 
welcome it just came out as a spontaneous chat..."
http://tinyurl.com/2tmcjj

Tim Berners-Lee Says the Time for the Semantic Web is Now
By Marshall Kirkpatrick.
"In an hour long interview posted today about the Semantic Web, W3C 
Director Tim Berners-Lee says all the pieces are in place to move full 
steam ahead and realize the potential of a world of structured, machine 
readable data. Available as a part of the Talking with Talis semantic 
web podcast series, the interview (...) is summarized on interviewer 
Paul Miller's new ZDNet blog dedicated to the semantic web."
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/tbl_calls_for_semweb.php

Stephanie Sullivan Interview
By An Event Apart.
"How to Succeed at Front-end Development"
http://tinyurl.com/2zunyt


+09: NAVIGATION.

Removing Left-Hand Navigation
By Free Usability Advice.
"Question: Our consultant recommended removing our site's left-hand 
navigation on top and 2nd-level pages (and making it an option only on 
the 3rd level), and instead integrating the navigation elements into 
the main content well. Is this a newly accepted best practice?..."
http://freeusabilityadvice.com/archive/47/removing-left-hand-navigation

The Last Days Of SEO
By Chris Copeland.
"...It seems like the trend is shifting from optimizing for a slow, 
dumb engine, and is moving towards a more sophisticated integration of 
elements, be it image, video, consumer reviews, or social networks. 
This changes what is getting optimized from the platform to the asset. 
That is why the future is all about Digital Asset Optimization (DAO) 
and not about SEO...."
http://blogs.mediapost.com/search_insider/?p=728

SEO Basics, introduction to Search Engine Optimization
By Ben Hunt.
"Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the on-going process of making 
sure that your web site performs as well as possible on specific search 
engine searches. This article aims to explain the absolute basics of 
SEO that every web site designer, developer, or owner should know."
http://tinyurl.com/34aeeq

Intelligent Paths Make Websites Friendlier
By Stefan Mischook.
"In this article, I discuss how to create an easier to maintain, more 
user friendly website by way of using intelligent paths."
http://tinyurl.com/24sqvc


+10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

Doctype Switching for IE 8
By Roger Johansson.
"...my initial reaction holds: I don't buy it. It doesn't matter how 
many arguments in favor of version targeting I read, it still seems so 
utterly and completely wrong that standards aware web developers will 
have to opt in to opt out..."
http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200802/doctype_switching_for_ie_8/

On IE8 Version Targeting
By Bruce Lawson.
"...for purely pragmatic reasons, I don't believe that the IE8 MMM will 
work. This does NOT mean that I hate Eric, Molly, Zeldman, Aaron 
Gustafson or Chris Wilson: it just means that I respectfully disagree 
with them. But I'm also a realist (or as much of a realist as 60s-born 
leftie accessibility-wonk can ever be), so I'm aware that, whatever I 
may think (or whatever you may think), it's likely that this is a done 
deal, and we'll see the MMM in IE8...."
http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2008/on-ie8-version-targeting/

WaSP Round Table: IE8's Default Version Targeting Behavior
By Aaron Gustafson.
"On 16 February, Web Standards Project Members Faruk Ates¸, Porter 
Glendinning, and I got together with Chris Wilson, Platform Architect 
for Internet Explorer to talk about IE8's proposed default version 
targeting behavior of having to opt-in to the browser's new standards 
mode..."
http://tinyurl.com/ys32u7

IE 8, Shooting Browsers and What To Do
By Robert Nyman.
"A topic that just can't be discussed enough is Microsoft and how some 
of their decisions affect us Web Developers, end users and, 
consequently, the entire world..."
http://tinyurl.com/32shj2

IE8 Version Targeting: Microsoft Considers Feedback
By Kevin Yank.
"...the issue continues to divide the community, and Microsoft is 
listening intently. Just a week ago, members of the Web Standards 
Project (some of whom were involved in working with Microsoft to 
develop its browser version targeting plan) got together with 
Microsoft's Chris Wilson for a round-table discussion about the 
community's reaction to the company's plans for IE8, and some of the 
ideas that have been proposed to adjust those plans for the better. The 
discussion is certainly worth a listen (or the transcript is worth a 
look) if you're interested in the debate, but it all comes down Chris 
Wilson's parting words..."
http://tinyurl.com/24ltjs


+11: TOOLS.

CSS Type Set
By csstypeset.com.
"CSS Type Set is a hands-on typography tool allowing designers and 
developers to interactively test and learn how to style their web 
content...The site serves as a hands-on tool for beginning designers 
and developers to interactively experiment with CSS in a WYSIWYG 
fashion. While similar concepts have been done before, our main focus 
was delivering a unique, easy-to-understand interface with instant CSS 
preview and output. When using the style controls, users are able to 
visually see how their entered text is affected and what code is used 
to achieve this specific look."
http://www.csstypeset.com/


+12: USABILITY.

Your Website: Just Words?
By Gerry McGovern.
Words are the building blocks of every website. But then, words
are the building blocks of modern civilization.
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2008/nt-2008-02-25-just-words.htm

What Makes a Good Form?
By Jessica Enders.
"...What's needed is an overarching model that can be used to direct 
all forms design activities and from which these other guidelines can 
all be derived..."
http://formulate.com.au/articles/what-makes-a-good-form/

The 4 Layers of a Form
By Jessica Enders.
"...where should a designer start when faced with a blank page or 
existing form? What's needed is some way to break the form up into 
manageable components that can be worked on one at a time..."
http://formulate.com.au/articles/layers-of-a-form/

Your Web Content is Data
By Rachel McAlpine.
"Business writers need to be aware that documents are treated as data 
by search engines, archiving systems and all manner of applications. 
This applies to all business documents, not just web content."
http://www.contented.com/contented/?p=345

Show and Tell: Imagining the User Experience Beyond Point, Click, and 
Type
By Jonathan Follett.
"More reliable and permanent than human memory, the technology of 
written language dominates as the primary method human beings use for 
conveying abstractions of complex ideas across space and time. The 
evolution of written language has complemented that of new distribution 
technologies--from handwritten papyrus scrolls to books and other print 
publications produced on offset printing presses to the pixels on our 
computer screens..."
http://www.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000269.php


[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.]

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