[webdev] Web Design Update: October 2, 2008

Thu Oct 2 06:32:32 CDT 2008

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 7, Issue 14, October 2, 2008.

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

++ISSUE 14 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: EVALUATION & TESTING.
05: EVENTS.
06: JAVASCRIPT.
07: MISCELLANEOUS.
08: NAVIGATION.
09: PHP.
10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
11: USABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Accessibility and SEO
By Bruce Lawson and Vasilis van Gemert.
Fronteers conference presentation.
http://my.opera.com/ODIN/blog/accessibility-and-seo-fronteers-talk

Multiple Form Labels and Screen Readers
By Roger Johansson.
"Just about every website needs some forms. Sometimes there are many of 
them, sometimes just a single contact form. Regardless of their number, 
they need to be usable and accessible, which can sometimes be a little 
more work than it would be if theory and practice aligned a little 
better..."
http://tinyurl.com/4rwswu

Silver Surfers
By Keith Instone.
"The US ibm.com home page has a feature on Helping seniors surf the 
web. The video sets the stage by talking about the aging Japanese 
population, and then explains how IBM helped Mitsukoshi, a department 
store, make its web site easier to use for older people..."
http://instone.org/silver-surfers

Video: YouTube and Easy YouTube with a Screen Reader
By Christian Heilmann.
"This is one of the demo videos that Kath Moonan of AbilityNet showed 
during her presentation. It is a user testing interview of a blind user 
trying to use YouTube with a screen reader and then try the same task 
with Easy YouTube..."
http://tinyurl.com/3hwo9k

Adding Structure to PDFs
By Adobe.
"You can improve the accessibility and reuse of Adobe PDF documents by 
adding tags to the InDesign document before you export..."
http://tinyurl.com/4pafq9

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Inheritance and Cascade
By Tommy Olsson.
"Inheritance and the cascade are two fundamental concepts in CSS. 
Everyone who uses CSS needs to understand them. Fortunately, they 
aren't very difficult to grasp, although some of the details may be a 
bit hard to remember..."
http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/28-inheritance-and-cascade/

Floats and Clearing
By Tommy Olsson.
"In this article you will get acquainted with floating and clearing?two 
must-have tools for the modern web designer. They are versatile tools 
that you can use to allow text to flow around images or even create 
multi-column layouts..."
http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/35-floats-and-clearing/

Static and Relative Positioning
By Tommy Olsson.
"In this article I'll start looking in depth at how you can use CSS to 
position HTML elements wherever you want on the page, using the 
position CSS property and some related properties..."
http://tinyurl.com/4l9bln

Absolute and Fixed Positioning
By Tommy Olsson.
"Now it's time to turn your attention to the second pair of position 
property values?absolute and fixed..."
http://tinyurl.com/4utlw5

Styling Tables
By Ben Buchanan.
"This tutorial will focus on applying CSS in an efficient manner, to 
produce clear and readable data table styles..."
http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/33-styling-tables/

Five CSS Design Browser Differences I Can Live With
By Andy Clarke.
"Web designs need not look exactly the same in all browsers. I know 
that's a topic I have written about and spoken on a fair amount before, 
but somehow I'm always amazed by the reactions that I get when the 
subject comes up."
http://tinyurl.com/3jyzd3

CSS Includes with the Title Attribute Might Be Ignored
By Robert Nyman.
"Yesterday I ran into a little unexpected behavior when adding title 
attributes to a couple of link elements..."
http://tinyurl.com/448gfq

CSS Systems for Writing Maintainable CSS
By Natalie Downe.
"A CSS System is a reusable set of content-oriented markup patterns and 
associated CSS created to express a site's individual design. It is the 
end result of a process that emphasizes up-front planning, loose 
coupling between CSS and markup, pre-empting browser bugs and overall 
robustness..."
http://natbat.net/2008/Sep/28/css-systems/

Automatic Numbering with CSS Counters
By David Storey.
"When writing documents, it is often useful to number sections and have 
a table of contents. You can number these by hand, directly in the 
markup, but this can be time consuming if the order changes and you 
have to edit all the numbers. CSS2.1 gives us a automated way to 
generate numbers using CSS counters, and this article will walk you 
through how to use them. One word of note before we start is that CSS 
counters are not yet implemented in IE, although they are on the 
roadmap for IE8..."
http://tinyurl.com/4dbvjb

Floats and Pos:ABS/IE6 Magic
By Niels Matthijs.
"Even though most css bugs out there are already well documented and 
provided with fixes, it's not always easy to recognize a bug you're 
encountering right away. Because of that, I think it won't hurt to put 
some of the more obscure bugs in the spotlight from time to time. Our 
favored subject is of course ie6, a true html and css magician. This 
article will focus on one of ie6's more cunning disappearing acts..."
http://www.onderhond.com/blog/work/float-absolute-position-ie

+03: DREAMWEAVER.

The Dreamweaver CS4 Application Bar
By Virginia DeBolt.
"In Dreamweaver CS4, there's a new item called Application Bar. It 
behaves differently in Windows and Mac..."
http://www.webteacher.ws/2008/09/29/the-dreamweaver-cs4-application-bar/

Dreamweaver CS4 Video Tutorial - CSS Option on the Properties Panel
By Stefan Mischook.
"I just released a new video tutorial that introduces the new CSS 
option in the properties panel..."
http://tinyurl.com/3ehhh5

+04: EVALUATION & TESTING.

A Structured Process for Transforming Usability Data into Usability 
Information
By Jonathan Howarth, Terence S. Andre, and Rex Hartson.
"Much research has been devoted to developing usability evaluation 
methods that are used in evaluating interaction designs. More recently, 
however, research has shifted away from evaluation methods and 
comparisons of evaluation methods to issues of how to use the raw 
usability data generated by these methods. Associated with this focus 
is the assumption that the transformation of the raw usability data 
into usability information is relatively straightforward. We would 
argue that this assumption is incorrect, especially for novice 
usability practitioners. In this article, we present a structured 
process for transforming raw usability data into usability information 
that is based on a new way of thinking about usability problem data. 
The results of a study of this structured process indicate that it 
helps improve the effectiveness of novice usability practitioners."
http://www.upassoc.org/upa_publications/jus/2007november/howarth.html

Decision Models for Comparative Usability Evaluation of Mobile Phones 
Using the Mobile Phone Usability Questionnaire (MPUQ)
By Young Sam Ryu, Kari Babski-Reeves, Tonya L. Smith-Jackson, and Maury 
A. Nussbaum.
"A comparative usability evaluation was performed using various 
subjective evaluation methods, including Mobile Phone Usability 
Questionnaire (MPUQ). Further, decision-making models using Analytic 
Hierarchy Process (AHP) and multiple linear regression were developed 
and applied. Although the mean rankings of the four phones were not 
significantly different across the evaluation methods, there were 
variations across the methods in terms of the number of rank orderings, 
preference proportions, and methods to select their initial preference. 
Thus, this study provided a useful insight into how users make 
different decisions through different evaluation methods. Also, the 
result showed that answering a usability questionnaire affected a 
user's decision-making process for comparative evaluation."
http://www.upassoc.org/upa_publications/jus/2007november/ryu.html

Asking Participants to "Pretend" in User Studies
By Jared Spool.
"One of the places we kept noticing this was when we watching people 
shop online. Asking a shopper to pretend to purchase ('Could you find a 
pair of shoes you might like to buy and put it in your cart?') produced 
extremely different behaviors than when we recruited people who needed 
the product and gave them the cash to make a real purchase. In the 
former case, they went through motions and skipped steps that we didn't 
see when they were considering and purchasing the product for their own 
true use."
http://tinyurl.com/47ouog

Accessibility Tested Web Sites: Nokia vs. Sony Ericsson
By Robert Nyman.
"Having done an amount of cell phone research lately, I've had the 
not-so-pleasant experience of seeing the level of quality of certain 
cell phone vendor web sites. Therefore, I'd like to compare Nokia vs. 
Sony Ericsson..."
http://tinyurl.com/4je2x2

+05: EVENTS.

Canadian User Experience Workshop (CanUX )
November 16-18, 2008.
Banff, Alberta, Canada.
http://canux.nform.ca/

Webstock 2009
February 16-20, 2009.
Wellington, New Zealand.
http://www.webstock.org.nz/

MIX 09
March 18-20, 2009.
Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.A.
http://visitmix.com/2009/

+06: JAVASCRIPT.

Speeding Adoption of WAI-ARIA
By Bruce Lawson.
"...I suggest that the W3C to add ARIA to the official validator. That 
would send a strong message about its commitment to ARIA, as well as 
allow codeshops, organizations and individuals who want validation to 
use it, to the immediate benefit of web users with disabilities."
http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2008/speeding-adoption-of-wai-aria/

Cooperating on Web 2.0 Accessibility
By Aaron Leventhal.
"...In IE 8 Beta 1 Microsoft introduced their own unique method for 
setting ARIA properties without notifying the working group.  The 
feature was added to IE 8 standards mode as well as legacy modes..."
http://tinyurl.com/45cd9e

Chapter: 'Coding and Design Patterns' from Stoyan Stefanov's 
Object-Oriented JavaScript
By Eric Miraglia.
"Stoyan's latest project is Object Oriented JavaScript, a new book from 
Packt whose simple goal is to help you learn how to 'think in 
JavaScript."
http://yuiblog.com/blog/2008/09/26/oojs/

+07: MISCELLANEOUS.

EmTech Inanity
By Dan Lyons.
"Was at the EmTech conference at MIT today and suffered through a panel 
led by Robert Scoble with four geeks (Facebook, Six Apart, Plaxo, 
Twine) talking about the future of the Web. No prepared remarks, just 
totally random conversation..."
http://realdanlyons.com/blog/2008/09/24/emtech-inanity/

+08: NAVIGATION.

Link Text: Where Does it Come From?
By Jonathan Christopher.
"The Web wouldn't exist without hyperlinks. The act of linking one 
document to another is the fundamental concept upon which the Internet 
was built. While technologies have vastly expanded on the simple 
context, hyperlinks still tie the Web together, but at the same time 
there's more to anchors..."
http://mondaybynoon.com/2008/09/29/link-text-where-does-it-come-from/

+09: PHP.

Seven Habits for Writing Secure PHP Applications
By Nathan A. Good.
"Security in a PHP application includes remote and local security 
concerns. Discover the habits PHP developers should get into to 
implement Web applications that have both characteristics..."
http://tinyurl.com/53hsaq

+10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

HTML 5 And The Hear-Write Web
By Karl Dubost.
"HTML 5 working draft defines a parsing algorithm which is robust 
enough that it will not break for the most common types of errors. Many 
computing engineers and Web designers think that this feature 
encourages bad quality for documents. Point taken. But let's look a bit 
further at what proposes HTML 5 in terms of input and output..."
http://www.w3.org/QA/2008/09/fixing-html-with-html5.html

Google Tech Talk: HTML5 Demos
By Ian Hickson.
"I gave a talk at Google on Monday demonstrating the various features 
of HTML5 that are implemented in browsers today. The video is now on 
YouTube, so now you too can watch and laugh at my lame presentation 
skills..."
http://blog.whatwg.org/demos-2008-sept

This Week in HTML 5 - Episode 7
By Mark Pilgrim.
"...The big news this week is the disclosure of a vulnerability that 
researchers have dubbed "clickjacking'..."
http://blog.whatwg.org/this-week-in-html-5-episode-7

+11: USABILITY.

Use White Space to Indicate Relationships Between Content Elements
By Dmitry Fadeyev.
"One of the most important tools in a designer's toolbox is white 
space. White space is just that ? it's space between various content 
pieces, like paragraphs, headings, buttons and so on. This space can be 
tweaked to achieve different effects ? such as to separate elements 
apart from each other by increasing the amount of space or group 
related things together by tightening it..."
http://tinyurl.com/3fy5hx

Comparing the Candidate's Sites
By Jared Spool.
"...I haven't had a chance to watch voters use either site, so I chose 
four scenarios that I thought would be common tasks for a voter 
visiting each site..."
http://tinyurl.com/4dkde9

New Frontiers in Usability for Users' Complex Knowledge Work
By Barbara Mirel.
"For usability professionals, one of the top priorities of the coming 
decades is to assure that products are usable and useful for people's 
complex work in complex systems. To meet this challenge we need to 
better understand the nature and practices of various domain-based 
complex tasks and the flow of people's work across tools. This essay 
gives an overview of articles in this issue that address these 
challenges and their implications for usability and usefulness..."
http://www.upassoc.org/upa_publications/jus/2008august/mirel1.html

Creating Effective Decision Aids for Complex Tasks
By Caroline Clarke Hayes and Farnaz Akhavi.
"...The studies described above provide the beginning of an 
understanding of why product designers do not tend to use formal 
mathematical methods in their daily work, and what their actual needs 
are. However, many additional issues need to be explored in order to 
fully understand the situation, and how to best create human-centered 
design decision aids...."
http://www.upassoc.org/upa_publications/jus/2008august/hayes1.html

Switching Between Tools in Complex Applications
By Will Schroeder.
"... Training and the inculcation of best practices may well improve 
this awareness and decision making ability, but most users never get 
either. Improved design for making these choices and transitions, on 
the other hand, reaches every user every time a tool needs changing. A 
model of user action made up of steps or segments that smoothly merge 
into an efficient operation as expertise increases falls short as a 
design goal for complex software because it omits the following..."
http://www.upassoc.org/upa_publications/jus/2008august/schroeder14.html

Unexpected Complexity in a Traditional Usability Study
By Tharon W. Howard.
"...As the field of usability studies grows and usability professionals 
are required to work with and adapt to the needs of new clients in new 
fields, the likelihood of encountering complex problems masquerading as 
simple ones will increase. Our research methods need to accommodate 
this and ensure that the studies we design for new clients include 
content experts' assessment of the quality of the users' performance 
and, when possible, head-to-head comparisons with competing 
products...."
http://www.upassoc.org/upa_publications/jus/2008august/howard12.html

How to Manage Out of Date Content
By Gerry McGovern.
"On the Web, nothing is more damaging to your organization's reputation 
and brand than out of date content."
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2008/nt-2008-09-29-out-of-date.htm

[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 at d.umn.edu

[Issue ends.]