[webdev] Web Design Update: September 8, 2005

Thu Sep 8 06:27:14 CDT 2005

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 4, Issue 11, September 8, 2005.

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

++ISSUE 11 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: DREAMWEAVER
05: EVALUATION & TESTING.
06: EVENTS.
07: FLASH.
08: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.
09: JAVASCRIPT.
10: MISCELLANEOUS.
11: PHP.
12: TOOLS.
13: USABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Web Accessibility: A Broader View
By John T. Richards and Vicki L. Hanson.
"In this paper, we take a broader view, discussing an approach that 
costs developers less and provides greater advantages to a larger 
community of users. While we have quite specific aims in our technical 
work, we hope it can also serve as an example of how the technical 
conversation regarding Web accessibility can move beyond the narrow 
confines of limited adaptations for small populations."
http://www-306.ibm.com/able/news/broader_view.html

CSS and Accessibility
By Richard Rutter.
"Here's something that's been playing on my mind recently. What role 
can CSS alone play in making websites accessible? WCAG says to separate 
content from presentation, so the implication is that using CSS for 
layout, colours, fonts, etc. makes a page more accessible. But what 
about more specific aspects?"
http://www.clagnut.com/blog/1553/

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Mobile Web Design
By Cameron Moll.
"Let's cut to the chase: You're considering retrofitting an existing 
website/web app to be more accessible to mobile users, or you're 
planning a new website/web app and want to include mobile in the mix. 
What are your options? The way we see it, your options boil down to 
four choices: 1.) Do nothing. 2.) Kill all styling and allow raw HTML 
to be rendered. 3.) Use media="handheld" stylesheets. 4.) Re-purpose 
content, code, and images specifically for mobile users. Following is 
an explanation of each method, including an unbiased look at the 
advantages and disadvantages of each..."
http://www.cameronmoll.com/archives/000428.html

Soup to Nuts: Making a CSS-based Layout Start to Finish
By Nate Steiner.
"My intention with this article is to describe how I make working, 
standards-based XHTML/CSS web sites. The challenge is not really 'how 
do I do this' but rather 'how do I choose from all the different ways 
to do this', and I thought some folks interested in this subject might 
appreciate a step by step walk through of my workflow. A basic 
understanding of HTML and CSS will be helpful, but not required."
http://tinyurl.com/dyohj

+03: COLOR.

Color Contrast
By James Siddall, Junior.
"Our call for assistance is directed towards cognitive psychologists, 
human factors specialists, color perception specialists, any expert 
that can confirm (or contradict, if more appropriate) our doubts 
regarding the W3C algorithm, either through experimentation or 
documented expertise. Our first goal is to collect scientific data 
which will disprove the validity of this formula, so that its acquired 
international authority is reasonably disproved. Our second goal is to 
identify (or propose and verify) a new alternative, which provides more 
credible results."
http://english.contrastocolori.org/

+04: DREAMWEAVER.

Macromedia Studio 8 (Review)
By PC Pro.
"...Ultimately, whether Macromedia is going out with a bang or a 
whimper, and whether you should buy Studio 8 or not, depends on your 
primary interest. If you're producing page-based sites with 
Dreamweaver/Fireworks, version 8 is a damp squib of an upgrade, but if 
you're producing or planning to produce 'rich Internet apps' with 
Flash, it's a breakthrough release..."
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/76248/macromedia-studio-8.html

+05: EVALUATION & TESTING.

A Usability Testing Bake-Off
By Jared M. Spool.
"Practicing usability testing has great similarities with baking an 
apple pie."
http://www.uie.com/events/uiconf/articles/usability_testing_bakeoff/

When Discount Usability Misleads Management - A Solution
By John Sorflaten.
"Usability folks often interact with marketing folks about progress on 
Web site design. Do they speak the same language? That is the question. 
If you tell someone that 80% of your test subjects "succeeded,'how 
might you be misleading them? Know how to qualify your discount 
usability test results with a "margin of error'."
http://www.humanfactors.com/downloads/jul05.asp#kath

+06: EVENTS.

Web Application Development Workshop
October 4-5, 2005.
Albany, New York U.S.A.
http://www.joinwow.org/albanyworkshop/

DesignFest 2005
October 5, 2005.
Toronto, Canada.
http://www.designfest.ca/

+07: FLASH.

In Search of... A Perfect Plugin Technique
By Andrew Kirkpatrick.
"I created a few test files that represent different approaches to 
including Flash in a web page and then tested them. Methods, testing 
criteria, and results at the end of this posting. The best solution? 
Using a server-side scripting language (ColdFusion, ASP, PHP, etc), a 
developer could deliver a page that satisfies all requirements to 
individual browsers without too much difficulty."
http://tinyurl.com/dl26x

+08: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

IA in Academia
By IAwiki.
"Who in the academic community is doing the leading research and 
inquiry into IA issues? Who are the big thinkers?"
http://www.iawiki.net/IAinAcademia

+09: JAVASCRIPT.

The Power of Javascript: Controlling the Execution of the Script
By Michael Youssef.
"When you write a script, most of the time you need to make a decision 
based on the values of some of your variables, or based on the values 
entered by the users, or even based on user actions. Decision making is 
a fundamental building block for all programming languages and it's 
similar in most of them. In this article, we discuss the if/else 
statement block, the switch statement, and take a look at the prompt() 
dialog box."
http://tinyurl.com/bju7f

Niceforms
By Lucian Slatineanu.
"As always, there is a solution. It's just not as handy as using just 
plain simple CSS styling. So it's time to bring on some JS support. As 
always, the trick is in getting this solution to work in all browsers, 
across all platforms and also degrade gracefully for those users that 
for some reason haven't yet made the move to a real browser."
http://www.badboy.ro/articles/2005-07-23/index.php

+10: MISCELLANEOUS.

Work vs. Progress
By Scott Berkun.
"It's easy to tell when someone is working, but how can you tell when 
they're making progress?"
http://www.scottberkun.com/essays/essay45.htm

+11: PHP.

10 Tips That Every PHP Developer Should Know, Part 2
By Jeffery Vaska.
"I wish I had known these 10 simple things the day I started working 
with PHP. This article is part II in the this series and is intended 
for newbies."
http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/vaska20050812.php3

PHP 6.0 Wishlist
By Rasmus Lerdorf.
"Chiming in with his thoughts on PHP6 and what changes should be made 
for it, Rasmus has sent a new email to the php-dev mailing list with 
his eight suggestions."
http://tinyurl.com/bnog8

Getting Started With Objects With PHP V5
By Matt Zandstra.
"This article describes the fundamentals of objects and classes in PHP 
V5, from the very basics through to inheritance, for experienced 
object-oriented programmers and those who have not yet been introduced 
to objects."
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-phpobj/

+12: TOOLS.

CSE HTML Validator Lite
By htmlvalidator.com
"Clean up your site with CSE Lite! CSE HTML Validator Lite is an award 
winning free HTML editor and basic HTML syntax checker for Microsoft 
Windows."
http://www.htmlvalidator.com/lite/

+13: USABILITY.

Simplicity Is Hard Work
By Gerry McGovern.
"Simplicity is hard. It's expensive to do well. 'Our experience is that 
for every mouse click we take out of the user experience, 20 things 
have to happen in our software behind the scenes,' states Brad Treat, 
Chief Executive of SightSpeed...You are the worst judge of whether your 
website or product is simple. You know your website. You designed it. 
Remember, a potential customer who has never been at your website 
before will spend less than one minute figuring out your homepage...To 
achieve simplicity an organization needs to be genuinely 
customer-focused. Extra investment will be required, as well as a 
special commitment from designers and management. Is it worth it? 
Certainly, organizations such as Apple and Google are showing that 
simplicity can become a genuine competitive advantage."
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2005/nt-2005-08-15-simplicity.htm

[Section one ends.]

++ SECTION TWO:

+14: 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.

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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 
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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.]