[webdev] Web Design Update: January 23, 2009

[Laura Carlson]

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 7, Issue 30, January 23, 2009.

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

++ISSUE 30 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: EVENTS.
04: JAVASCRIPT.
05: NAVIGATION.
06: PHP.
07: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
08: TOOLS.
09: USABILITY.
10: XML.

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

[Contents ends.]


++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Alt Survey via Twitter
By Gez Lemon.
Should the alt attribute be required for the img element in HTML5? Why or 
why not? Gez Lemon is conducting a twitter survey/taking comments for a 
W3C WAI position paper. He wants to be sure to consider all sides of the 
debate and is interested in hearing opinions. If you are a twitter user 
and would like to respond please use the hashtag #althtml5 .
http://twitter.com/gezlemon/status/1139666244
Background info:
http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/IssueAltAttribute
Realtime comments:
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=althtml5

2009: The Year Websites Become Accessible To All
By Bruce Lawson.
"For many years, the goal of making websites accessible to everyone has 
been pursued generally with little enthusiasm. But now a number of 
developments are conspiring to move accessibility up the agenda, 
according to web expert Bruce Lawson."
http://tinyurl.com/ant6mu

Taking Symbols for Granted
By Sharon Perry.
"Following on from my post about 'Taking Symbols for Granted', where I 
reviewed Jonathan Chetwynd's paper entitled 'Communication with symbols: 
from the web to the internet and beyond', Jonathan has just let me know 
about the launch of his Icon Chat and Search Engine at openicon.org..."
http://tinyurl.com/7dacht

Accessibility Comparisons
By Douglas T.
"This is a work in progress, and shouldn't be relied upon to be perfect. 
If you have comments or corrections, please feel free to leave them. 
Based on Comparison WCAG and Section..."
http://douglast.com/accessibility-comparisons

Closed Captioning Resources
By High Tech Center Training Unit.
"California community colleges have a legal responsibility to provide 
equal access to video resources for students, faculty and staff who are 
deaf or hard of hearing. This is often most easily accomplished through 
closed captioning of video resources. If you are unfamiliar with the 
captioning process, you might wish to begin by exploring the definition 
of some common terms. This list of terms is provided by the National 
Captioning Institute..."
http://www.htctu.net/divisions/altmedia/captioning/cc/ccmain.htm

A Larger Discussion (was RE: Inline Images and ALT text)
WebAIM Thread initiated by John Foliot.
Alt text discourse.
http://webaim.org/discussion/mail_thread.php?thread=3741

Is It Time for Social Networks Grow Up?
By Henny Swan.
"Site owners would do well to take into account interface design issues 
for people with disabilities and the aging for reasons that go beyond 
just inclusion. Disabled users are hardcore user testers with their needs 
pushing the capabilities and possibilities of what technology can offer 
users in general. Add to this that having grown up with the web and 
social networking we fully expect to be able to use our favorite sites 
later in life as we grow old these two groups are too important to 
ignore. I certainly don't plan on dying young anyway..."
http://www.iheni.com/is-it-time-for-social-networks-grow-up/

Accessify Gets a Long Overdue Facelift
By Ian Lloyd.
"Finally. At last..."
http://tinyurl.com/96sfvf

A Sighted Person Testing a Website With a Screen Reader (Tweet)
By Lisa Herrod (scenariogirl).
"A sighted person testing a website with a screen reader is like asking 
someone who can't drive to test drive a car."
http://twitter.com/scenariogirl/status/1135081580


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

WaSP Community CSS3 Feedback 2008
By Elika Etemad (fantasai).
"This document summarizes and comments on feedback collected through the 
Web Standards Project's Tell the CSS WG what you want from CSS3 blog 
post..."
http://fantasai.inkedblade.net/style/discuss/wasp-feedback-2008

Layout Is Expensive
By  Elika Etemad (fantasai).
"A lot of people complain about limitations in the layout capabilities in 
CSS. Layout in CSS is a pain, and it's a pain because CSS originally 
wasn't designed for coarse layout, only for linear documents. The CSS 
Working Group totally understands that CSS today is totally incompetent 
at doing layout. We are amazed at the hacks designers have had to come up 
with and dismayed at how brittle they are. It is very, very obvious to us 
that CSS needs better, easier, more powerful layout capabilities..."
http://fantasai.inkedblade.net/weblog/2009/layout-is-expensive/


+03: EVENTS.

European Accessibility Forum
March 27, 2009.
Frankfurt, Germany
http://eafra.eu/

UPA Conference 2009
June 8-12, 2009.
Portland, Oregon, U.S.A.
http://www.usabilityprofessionals.org/conference/2009/

Website Makeover: Focusing on Your Visitors' Major Tasks - Janice "Ginny" 
Redish
June 17, 2009.
Washington, DC, U.S.A.
http://www.usa.gov/webcontent/wmu/spring2009/websitemakeover.shtml

ED-MEDIA 2009
June 22-26, 2009.
Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.A.
http://www.aace.org/conf/cities/honolulu/

WORLDCOMP 2009
July 13-16, 2009.
Los Vegas, Nevada U.S.A.
http://www.world-academy-of-science.org/worldcomp09/ws

Information Architecture 1
April 9, 2009 in Washington D.C., U.S.A.
May 21, 2009 in London United Kingdom.
June 26, 2009 in San Francisco, California,  U.S.A.
July 31, 2009 in Sydney Australia.
http://www.nngroup.com/events/tutorials/ia.html

Information Architecture 2
April 10, 2009 in Washington D.C., U.S.A.
May 22, 2009 in London United Kingdom.
June 27, 2009 in San Francisco, California,  U.S.A.
August 1, 2009 in Sydney Australia.
http://www.nngroup.com/events/tutorials/info_arch_2.html


+04: JAVASCRIPT.

Ajax and Accessibility, Part Two
By Alastair Campbell.
"In the second of a two-part opinion piece, Alastair Campbell explains 
how ARIA can make JavaScript more accessible..."
http://www.netmag.co.uk/zine/home/ajax-and-accessibility-part-two

Freedom Scientific Web Cast on ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Application)
"Freedom Scientific's Chief Technical Officer Glen Gordon explains ARIA 
and its benefits. Jonathan Mosen then demonstrates some applications with 
ARIA enabled for improved accessibility."
http://tinyurl.com/7bjfum

Free Chapter: 'Advanced Techniques' from Nicholas C. Zakas's Professional 
JavaScript for Web Developers
By Eric Miraglia.
http://yuiblog.com/blog/2009/01/16/projs2/


+05: NAVIGATION.

Crimes Against Hypertext
By Andrew Tetlaw.
"...Poor linking practices are common ? editorially and visually ? and it 
has a direct negative impact on usability..."
http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/01/13/crimes-against-hypertext/

Avoiding Search Engine Optimization Madness
By Gerry McGovern.
"Optimize for the searcher, not the search engine. Focus on your 
customers, not on the technology..."
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2009/nt-2009-01-19-seo-madness.htm


+06: PHP.

Code Readability Part 2, Code Structure
By Shawn Straton.
"I've had the pleasure of maintaining a legacy application developed by 
people who were past deadline the second they had their assignment handed 
to them in the past and it can get really interesting rather quickly when 
you see how sloppy you can get when you are in such a hurry. Here are 
some guidelines I've given myself to ensure that the structure is correct 
at the end of the day."
http://www.shawnstratton.info/code-readability-part-2-code-structure

50 Extremely Useful PHP Tools
By Smashing magazine.
"This post presents 50 useful PHP tools that can significantly improve 
your programming workflow. Among other things, you'll find a plethora of 
libraries and classes that aid in debugging, testing, profiling and 
code-authoring in PHP..."
http://tinyurl.com/7fu33u


+07: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

How Can I Validate (X)HTML + ARIA?
By Steve Faulkner.
"An issue with the use of WAI-ARIA in HTML documents is that they don't 
validate. When you run a HTML document containing ARIA attributes through 
the W3C Validator it shows errors in the results for any ARIA attributes. 
More importantly it does not inform me of errors in the ARIA code, for 
example, if the role value used is incorrect in reference to the WAI ARIA 
specification..."
http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/?p=107

Elevate Web Design at the University Level
By Leslie Jensen-Inman.
"Web education is out of date and fragmented. There are good people 
working hard to change this, but because of the structure of higher 
education, it will take time. As part of a year-long journey to discover 
where we are in web education and where we need to go, Leslie 
Jensen-Inman interviewed 32 web design and development leaders. The 
consensus: technology moves too fast for college and university curricula 
to keep up. How, then, can educators create a sustainable foundation for 
the future?..."
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/elevatewebdesignattheuniversitylevel

Brighter Horizons for Web Education
By Aarron Walter.
"No industry can sustain itself if it doesn't master the art of 
cultivating new talent-an art that requires close ties between 
practitioners and educators. Yet web design education consists mainly of 
introductory Flash classes and the occasional 90s-style HTML table layout 
tutorial. How drastic is the web design education gap, and what can be 
done to close it? Designer, developer, and web design educator Aarron 
Walter of The Web Standards Project surveys the state of the curricula..."
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/brighterhorizonsforwebeducation

Designing Around hAccessibility
By Andy Clarke.
"At the moment I'm writing a script for a DVD tutorial on microformats 
that I will be recording for New Riders at the end of February. While 
designing some shiny new examples for the hCalendar event microformat, 
I've been revisiting the problems and discussions of accessibility that 
surround the date design pattern and thinking about possible design 
solutions."
http://forabeautifulweb.com/blog/about/designing_around_haccessibility/

WHATWG FAQ
By Sam Ruby.
"...Simply put, there needs to be a recourse if a person or a group 
disagrees with a decision made by the editor of the WHATWG document. That 
recourse is forking. I realize that  is a very high bar, and will say 
that is intentionally so.  Simply put, specs don't write themselves... I 
don't care how good you think your idea is, either you need to step up 
and directly write the spec text yourself, or accept that you need to be 
persuasive..."
http://intertwingly.net/blog/2009/01/16/WHATWG-FAQ

HTML5: Put Up or Shut Up
By Shelly Powers.
"...Quite simply, that is the most absurd set of statements I have ever 
read. What Sam is saying, if you don't like it, fork, or shut up..."
http://realtech.burningbird.net/web/page-markups/why-i-will-never-support-html5

Respect
By Shelley Powers.
"I have spent too much time worrying about specifications managed by 
people who, frankly, don't have a lot of respect for what I have to say. 
I am not a browser developer, specification author, nor do I fit within 
the narrow parameters of 'people who are seen to be contributors...'."
http://realtech.burningbird.net/web/page-markups/respect

Contributions Welcome
By Sam Ruby.
"What I wish to do (on the list! what you do on your own blog is up to 
you!) is dampen the first kind of interaction, and encourage the third. 
I'm still very far from where I would like to be on this. If I ever solve 
this issue, we should be able to reap the benefit of many more voices. 
Perhaps that's not enough to get you to point out a specific issue in the 
spec and describe how it could be addressed.  If not, then I'll simply 
figure out what the next barrier is, and address that. Maybe that will 
never be enough, but I am committed to try."
http://intertwingly.net/blog/2009/01/17/Contributions-Welcome

Pinky and the Markup Brains
By Shelley Powers.
"What ended up being the ultimate irritation of my brief foray into HTML5 
land, is that I found out, after careful perusal of my original use of 
RDFa...
http://tinyurl.com/a3u4y8


+08: TOOLS.

Skip Navigation Builder
By Ian Lloyd.
"...This tool lets you quickly create one or more skip links on a page, 
generating all the necessary markup, CSS and JavaScript (unfortunately 
this does require JavaScript for the effect to work, as there are still 
many versions of Internet Explorer in use that do not allow us to apply a 
focus pseudo class in CSS..."
http://tinyurl.com/d57gql

ARIA Slider Generator
By Ian Lloyd.
"This tool is reverse-engineered from this ARIA slider example by the 
Paciello Group. I'm not convinced about its usefulness - it was an 
experiment, more than anything - but I'm keen to produce some more tools 
which may make the process of creating ARIA-compliant page 
elements/features more simple. If you have an idea for an ARIA tool that 
I could build, please drop me a line."
http://tinyurl.com/8qt9sk

Quick Page Accessibility Test
By Ian Lloyd.
"Here's a handy little tool that uses a bookmarklet/favelet to give a 
quick analysis of any web page, highlighting definite issues, warning 
about possible issues and also highlighting areas that could benefit from 
some ARIA enhancements."
http://tinyurl.com/a9h389

Extending Web Browser Functionality - Greasemonkey for all web browsers
By Robert Nyman.
"Ever felt that you have had the need to enhance your web browser, or the 
functionality of some web site you frequently visit? Here I will explain 
how to do that..."
http://tinyurl.com/8kfy6m


+09: USABILITY.

New Standards in Usability
By David Travis.
"2008 saw the release of several international usability standards, many 
within the influential ISO 9241 series. Two of these standards focus on 
accessibility and another provides guidelines for usable web sites. This 
article explains why usability standards are important and summarizes the 
13 new parts of ISO 9241..."
http://www.userfocus.co.uk/articles/ISO9241_update.html


+10: XML.

RDFa
By ESW Wiki.
"RDFa is a syntax that allows for embedding RDF information into (X)HTML 
documents via attributes. The best starting point to explore RDFa is the 
official RDFa page at the SWD-WG Wiki..."
http://esw.w3.org/topic/RDFa

SVG Tutorial
By Jakob Jenkov.
"SVG is short for Scalable Vector Graphics. It is a graphic format in 
which the shapes are specified in XML. The XML is then rendered by an SVG 
viewer. Today (2009) most web browser can display SVG just like they can 
display PNG, GIF, and JPG..."
http://tutorials.jenkov.com/svg/index.html

RDFa is to Structured Data, Like Canvas is to Bitmap and SVG is to Vector
By Shelley Powers.
"...This then returns us to my earlier supposition: To not support 
RDF/RDFa as the de facto implementation of complex, structured data is 
not consistent. To continue to do so demonstrates that perhaps other 
issues are at play in regards to RDF/RDFa. Such inconsistencies are not 
in the best interest when developing a new specification meant for 
widespread use on the web. If, as I believe, the inconsistency reflects 
an underlying bias against the concept behind RDF, which is that true web 
semantics is based on structured data, not natural language processing, 
or not exclusively based on natural language processing, then I believe 
it's important to highlight such bias, and deal with it accordingly."
http://tinyurl.com/6tsw27


[Section one ends.]


++ SECTION TWO:

+11: 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.]