[webdev] Web Design Update: December 30, 2008

Tue Dec 30 15:30:21 CST 2008

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 7, Issue 27, December 30, 2008.

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

++ISSUE 27 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: COLOR.
03: EVENTS.
04: JAVASCRIPT.
05: MISCELLANEOUS.
06: NAVIGATION.
07: PHP.
08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
09: TOOLS.
10: TYPOGRAPHY.
11: USABILITY.
12: XML.

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

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Relationship Between Mobile Web Best Practices (MWBP) and Web Content 
Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)
By Alan Chuter and Yeliz Yesilada, Editors.
"This technical report describes the relationships, overlaps and 
differences between the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and 
the Mobile Web Best Practices (MWBP). Introductory information can be 
found in Web Content Accessibility and Mobile Web: Making a Web Site 
Accessible Both for People with Disabilities and for Mobile Devices..."
http://www.w3.org/TR/mwbp-wcag/

Designers Challenged to Include Disabled
By Mike Steere.
"Don Norman, design Professor at Northwestern University in Illinois, 
and the author of 'The Design of Future Things,' is issuing a challenge 
to designers and engineers across the world: Create things that work 
for everyone..."
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/10/30/design.approaches/index.html

More Online Captioned Videos and iTunes
By Jamie Sommers.
"It's hard to find captioned or subtitled videos online..."
http://meryl.net/ci/2008/12/more_online_cap.html

+02: COLOR.

Tools If You Are (Not) Colorblind
By Daniel Fluck.
"This is an overview of available software and websites which either 
help and assist you if you are suffering from color blindness (Visolve, 
Daltap, eyePilot) or tools that can show you how the world looks like 
for colorblind persons. Next to that, programs are indicated that can 
recognize color and can show the name and/or code (e.g. RGB)..."
http://www.colblindor.com/2008/12/23/15-tools-color-blindness/

+03: EVENTS.

Assistive Technology Industry Association Conference
January 28-31, 2009.
Orlando, Florida, U.S.A.
http://www.atia.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3280

Creating and Repurposing More Accessible Content
January 5, May 4, or September 7, 2009.
Online Course.
http://www.easi.cc/workshops/text.htm

Barrier-free Information Technology
January 5, May 4, or September 7, 2009.
Online Course.
http://www.easi.cc/workshops/adaptit.htm

Barrier-free Web Design
February 2, June 1, or October 5, 2009.
Online Course.
http://www.easi.cc/workshops/easiweb.htm

Future of Web Apps (FOWA)
Feburary 23-24, 2009.
Miami, Florida, U.S.A.
http://events.carsonified.com/fowa/2009/miami/

Future of Web Apps (FOWA)
March 6, 2009.
Dublin, Ireland.
http://events.carsonified.com/fowa/2009/dublin

Delivering Innovative Intranets
March 12, 2009.
London, United Kingdom.
http://www.jboye.co.uk/events/master-class-with-james-robertson/

+04: JAVASCRIPT.

WAI-ARIA 1.0 User Agent Implementation Guide
By Aaron Leventhal and Michael Cooper, Editors.
"This document is part of the WAI-ARIA suite described in the ARIA 
Overview."
http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/aria-implementation/

+05: MISCELLANEOUS.

What's On Tap: Predictions for 2009
By Josh Catone.
"It's that time of the year again. As we noted earlier in the week, 
nothing is more fun for tech bloggers than looking ahead to next year 
and trying to predict the future. Prediction posts are an annual 
tradition in the blogosphere, and we enjoy doing them."
http://tinyurl.com/9ub257

+06: NAVIGATION.

More on Breadcrumbs as a Design Cop-Out
By Jared Spool.
"...As I've said before, I'm not suggesting that designers stop 
implementing them. I'm just trying to prevent the knee-jerk reaction of 
always including them under some misguided notion that they always 
improve the site..."
http://tinyurl.com/9r4sry

+07: PHP.

On Internationalization
By Nate Abele.
"...Internationalization, whether for an event or a web application, 
takes effort. But, with a little planning, it's not so bad. Before 
diving in, let's cover some terminology..."
http://phpadvent.org/2008/on-internationalization-by-nate-abele

+08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

The HTML Standards Process Grinds On
By Dana Blankenhorn.
"Standards seem to work similarly. Just the cover of the 
standards-writing document for HTML5 is daunting. Is this code or 
another O.J. trial? (Rimshot.)"
http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=3234
Comments:
http://talkback.zdnet.com/5206-10535-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=55865

A National Direction for International Standards
By Rick Jelliffe.
"...Most governments have established agencies for open-source 
promotion, however in my view they need to be much more comprehensive 
in their business: the need to be positively encourage open research, 
open development, open source, and open standards. (They need to be 
encourage free variants of the same as well, if we take Stallman's 
'free' as a platform not just a political stance.) It needs to be much 
bigger than just "How do finesse this monopoly in a positive 
direction?" or "How do we reduce software costs?" though they certainly 
may be inputs. It may involve re-aligning the goals and benchmarking of 
academics, researchers, bureaucrats and industry to reward openness 
more..."
http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2008/12/a-national-direction-for-inter.html

+09: TOOLS.

CSS SuperScrub
By isnoop.net.
Reduces the size and complexity of your CSS by "programmatically 
stripping unneeded content, stripping redundant calls, and 
intelligently grouping the remaining element names".
http://isnoop.net/tools/css.php

Operator
By Michael Kaply.
Operator is an extension for Firefox that adds the ability to interact 
with semantic data on web pages, including microformats, RDFa and eRDF.
http://www.kaply.com/weblog/operator/

+10: TYPOGRAPHY.

Typechart - Browse Web Type, Grab CSS
"Typechart lets you flip through, preview and compare web typography 
while retrieving the CSS."
http://www.typechart.com/

+11: USABILITY.

11 Expert Tips For Enhancing The User Login Process
By Gary Barber.
"...if the login process itself is delivering a poor experience, then 
people will be reluctant to use it, and all of those killer features 
you added will be in vain. In the worst case, it could be discouraging 
people from logging back into the site at all, which means no 
community, no repeat sales - all of this adds up to a failed site..."
http://tinyurl.com/8jopyj

+12: XML.

Proposed Elements and Element Reform for XHTML2
By Gregory J. Rosmaita.
http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/xhtml2/wiki/ProposedElements

[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.

+ 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 
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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.]