[webdev] Web Design Update: November 9, 2005

[Laura Carlson]

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 4, Issue 20, November 9, 2005.

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

++ISSUE 20 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: PHP.
11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
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.

Escape From CAPTCHA
By Matt May.
"CAPTCHA is a poor solution...Developers need to look at the real 
problem:...how much access control is needed?...how can we deliver it 
without breaking standards and accessibility?"
http://www.w3.org/2004/Talks/0319-csun-m3m/Overview.html

Breaking a Visual CAPTCHA
By Greg Mori and Jitendra Malik.
"This is the homepage of the Shape Contexts based approach to break 
Gimpy, the CAPTCHA test used at Yahoo! to screen out bots. Our method 
can successfully pass that test 92% of the time. See EZ-Gimpy in action 
at Yahoo! The approach we take uses general purpose algorithms that 
have been designed for generic object recognition. The same basic ideas 
have been applied to finding people in images, matching handwritten 
digits, and recognizing 3D objects."
http://www.cs.sfu.ca/~mori/research/gimpy/

Shaw Trust User Testing
By Dan Champion.
"Accessibility was a prominent feature of ClacksWeb's development plan, 
reflecting its status as a local authority site and my increasing 
awareness of it accessibility as a critical issue. As work on the site 
progressed in early 2005 I undertook regular checks to make sure it was 
on track to deliver, both by checking against the WCAG and by using 
very simple tests like increasing the text size, browsing the site with 
Lynx, and navigating with the keyboard. Yesterday it became very clear 
to me just how inadequate that sort of testing was in truly determining 
whether or not the site was accessible."
http://www.blether.com/archives/2005/10/shaw_trust_user.php


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Join Me, and Together We Can Rule the Galaxy as Father and Geeks!
By Andy Clarke.
"A few weeks back in Cupertino, I saw Molly and Aaron explain how the 
specificity of CSS selectors is calculated in a way which I hadn't seen 
before. Then today I came across a knotty problem while building XHTML 
and CSS templates for a new project where two selectors behaved 
differently to how I expected and I realized that I had not completed 
my training."
http://www.stuffandnonsense.co.uk/archives/css_specificity_wars.html

CSS2 and CSS2.1 Specificity Clarified
By Molly E. Holzschlag.
Lest you get swept up into the stars with the imaginative Malarkey, who 
puts a cleverly galactic twist on describing CSS specificity, let me 
stop you with my own unique powers and clear up his errors before you 
follow his flawed math and find yourself flung back to earth most 
painfully.
http://www.molly.com/2005/10/06/css2-and-css21-specificity-clarified/

Flexible Navigation Example
By Christian Heilmann.
"I was asked by a friend yesterday to review their company web site and 
was amazed to see table layouts with MM_ JavaScript rollover 
abominations still being paid good money for. One of the arguments for 
the old school design was that they wanted 'buttons' for navigation, 
and I promised to make a demo of a text/CSS navigation that does look 
like a nice graphical one and allow for font-resizing without breaking 
apart. It is nothing special, it has been done before but what the hey, 
have a look for yourself..."
http://icant.co.uk/articles/flexible-css-menu/

Stop Using CSS Hacks Now
By Roger Johansson.
"Still using CSS hacks for Internet Explorer? Kick the habit now or 
you'll be sorry..." Be sure to check out the comments.
http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200510/stop_using_css_hacks_now/

IE Blog: Replace Your Old Hacks With a New One!
By Ben Buchanan.
"No doubt you've seen this: IEBlog : Call to action: The demise of CSS 
hacks and broken pages. Microsoft is telling us to replace CSS hacks 
with a new, officially-sanctioned hack (yeah, the perfect solution). 
Instead of fixing the rendering engine in IE7, they're telling us to 
use conditional comments and write a separate stylesheet all for IE 
(because it's special). It would be far better to just make the 
rendering engine work properly, so it obeyed the standard rules and 
ignored the hack rules... you know, just like standards-compliant 
browsers do. Then we'd just remove the IE6 hacks when IE6 became 
irrelevant in the marketplace. But no, MS wants us to edit every single 
document we have..."
http://tinyurl.com/cns2w


+03: DREAMWEAVER.

Tip: Dreamweaver 8 CSS Styles Panel Improvements
By Virginia DeBolt.
"Dreamweaver 8 is more CSS-friendly than previous versions. I'm going 
to describe a couple of welcome improvements in the CSS Styles panel..."
http://www.webteacher.ws/2005/10/tip-dreamweaver-8-css-styles-panel.html

Introduction to Designing with CSS--Part 5: Defining Columns and 
Vertical List Navigation
By Adrian Senior.
"Easily change your page's navigational design by making quick updates 
in your CSS file...Note: This article has been updated for Dreamweaver 
8."
http://tinyurl.com/cf88r

Introduction to Designing with CSS--Part 6: Deciding Whether to Float 
or Position Columns
By Adrian Senior.
"Use alternative methods for creating two-column layouts and learn the 
strengths and weaknesses of each...Note: This article has been updated 
for Dreamweaver 8."
http://tinyurl.com/buxfe


+04: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Usability Test Planning
By DeeDee DeMulling.
"Usability Testing has work activities that come together before going 
out to do the study..."
http://tinyurl.com/bd9s4


+05: EVENTS.

SITE 2006
Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education International 
Conference
March 20-24, 2006.
Orlando, Florida  U.S.A.
http://site.aace.org/conf/


+06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

Information Architecture in an European Dimension: Strengths, 
Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats
By Peter J. Bogaards.
"Presentation from Europe's first information architecture summit - 
'This talk will take an analytical but subjective approach to the 
current state-of-affairs of (continental) European IA. The local IA 
communities of practice, knowledge and interest seem still premature, 
fragmented and not well-connected. Even if there is such a thing as an 
European IA community, it lacks a solid identity and definitely a 
strategy.'"
http://www.bogieland.com/euroia_2005.htm


+07: JAVASCRIPT.

Using Ajax
By Phil Ballard.
"Page update without refresh using Javascript, PHP and XML's 
XMLHTTPRequest object (also known as 'remote scripting')"
http://www.mousewhisperer.co.uk/ajax_page.html

AJAX: Getting Started
By Mozilla Developer Center (Also known "Devmo", short for 
"DEVeloper.Mozilla.Org").
"This article guides you through the AJAX basics and gives you two 
simple hands-on examples to get you started."
http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/AJAX:Getting_Started

Is AJAX Here to Stay?
By Jordan Frank.
"Jordan Frank takes a high-level look at the way AJAX is changing the 
Web and whether it's a technology that's going to stick around."
http://tinyurl.com/9lom2

Take Command With AJAX
By Stoyan Stefanov.
"Want to get a bang out of your AJAX artillery? In this hands-on 
tutorial, Stoyan puts AJAX on the front line as he develops a Web app 
with which you can execute shell commands on your Web server. The 
downloadable code provides a real tactical advantage as Stoyan marshals 
JavaScript and XML to create the app."
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/take-command-ajax


+08: MISCELLANEOUS.

Audio Interview with Jakob Nielsen
By Larry Magid.
"To design a usable website, designers need to think how the user is 
going to use their website rather than present him with what they want 
him to see."
http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail670.html

Web 2.0: Is It Just Hype?
By Meryl Evans.
"The term is hype. That is all it is. Hype. Cry and scream, if you 
want, but the Web can't have a label like this. It's not a project with 
a start and finish timeline. It evolves. When the first phone came to 
be, it didn't get names like Phone 1.0 or Phone BC (before cell). The 
phone industry involved and now the lines are blurring between phones 
and Internet connections, even cable television. But, the thoughts and 
ideas behind it are important..."
http://www.meryl.net/articles/archives/003870.php


+09: NAVIGATION.

Basics of Search Engine Optimization
By Roger Johansson.
At my day job, we're contacted every now and then by clients asking 
about search engine positioning and optimization. Most of the time the 
client has been approached by an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) 
consultant trying to talk them into paying lots of money for search 
engine optimization. The SEO firms promise 'guaranteed top results' and 
'submission to 500 000 search engines and directories'.
http://tinyurl.com/449me

The Role of Alignment in Web design
By Joe Clark.
"I have here a curious paper by Parush et al., 'Impact of Visual Layout 
Factors in Performance in Web Pages: A Cross-Language Study.' The 
researchers attempt to generalize from user-interface research on 
application software and what little research there is on Web 
sites...It seems that the more links you've got on a page, the harder 
it is to find the one you want. I suppose that is true if all the links 
are blue underlined, as all were in the study, but real-world Web pages 
don't look like that, so the entire experiment is pretty much 
irrelevant, from what I can see. If I have to find a link on a page, I 
use type-ahead find."
http://blog.fawny.org/2005/10/10/parush/


+10: PHP.

PHP 101 (part 14): Going to the Polls
Putting the pieces together - a first Web application.
By Vikram Vaswani.
"Over the final two chapters of this tutorial, I'm going to guide you 
through the process of creating two real-world PHP applications. Not 
only will this introduce you to practical application development with 
PHP, but it will also give you an opportunity to try out all the theory 
you've imbibed over the past weeks."
http://www.zend.com/php/beginners/php101-14.php


+11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

The State of the Art in Australian Web Development
By John Allsopp.
"In a way, I found the results somewhat depressing. I had expected 
quite a bit better, to be frank. In terms of validation, structural and 
semantic HTML and accessibility, there is little evidence that the 
significant majority of sites are doing things any differently than 
half a decade ago. But on reflection, if we had done this survey or 
five years ago, we would have found little if any CSS, few if any 
doctype declarations, even fewer alt attributes, even more use of 
images for text. At least we are moving in the right direction. Let's 
hope when we do this survey in the future, we'll find more to be upbeat 
about."
http://westciv.com/style_master/house/good_oil/best_practices/

Criticisms of Internet Explorer
By Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticisms_of_Internet_Explorer


+12: TOOLS.

The Typetester
By Marko Dugonjic.
"The Typetester is an online application for comparison of the fonts 
for the screen. It's primary role is to make web designer's or web 
developer's life easier. As the new fonts are bundled into operating 
systems, the list of the common fonts will be updated."
http://typetester.maratz.com/


+13: USABILITY.

9 Lessons From 9 Years of Interface Design
By Luke Wroblewski.
"Over the next few articles on Functioning Form, I'll dive into each of 
these lessons with concrete examples and explanations..."
http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?209

Insights Come in All Shapes and Sizes
By Luke Wroblewski.
"In 2000, I flew out to San Jose to work on a product for a company 
called Currenex. They had a successful terminal-based client 
application that enabled banks and their customers to trade currencies 
and were looking to bring the experience online as a Web application. 
What greeted me there in addition to representatives from business, 
marketing, and engineering teams was a fifty-page report of existing 
user 'interviews'. In truth, however, the report was more of an 
activity log than a set of interviews. Each user's daily activities 
were chronicled minute by minute in vivid detail. Reading through the 
report, I was instantly..."
http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?210

Writing it Down Forces You to Think it Through
By Luke Wroblewski.
"Within my proposals for Web application design projects, I always 
include the following clause when outlining project deliverables: 
'Accompanying text will be included with each set of screen designs to 
provide a high-level overview of the design decisions made.' This 
portion of the project deliverables not only gives my clients an 
understanding of the research and rationale that went into my designs, 
it also forces me to rationalize the decisions I've made and explain 
them in a clear and concise manner. Writing down my design decisions 
enables me to:Solidify my design approach: Within application design, 
there..."
http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?211

Less is More...
By Luke Wroblewski.
"Gradually moving away from a 'more is more' approach to 'less is more' 
is not unique to Web design. As most professional musicians mature, 
they no longer try to play as many notes as possible and instead focus 
on playing the right notes...For Web designers, the right 'notes' 
amount to the minimum amount of visual and interaction elements 
required to effectively communicate content and actions to end-users. 
Of course, the principle of 'less is more' applies to all aspects of an 
interface: visual design, interaction design, organizational structure, 
and content."
http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?212

...Except When More is More
By Luke Wroblewski.
"Previously I made the case that, in interface design, less is more. 
But as with all design principles, the real answer is 'it depends'. It 
depends on the context and type of information you are presenting to 
users as well as their goals and actions."
http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?213

Patterns Occur at All Levels
By Luke Wroblewski.
"In order to maximize the value of patterns, designers need to be aware 
of common design opportunities and limitations at both macro and micro 
levels..."
http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?217

Documentation Takes Time. Make It Worth the Effort.
By Luke Wroblewski.
"Documentation, after all, takes time. Internal design organizations 
within large companies are often moving too fast to keep records of 
their work. Consulting firms and studios, on the other hand, are always 
crunched by scope and rarely have extra 'paid' cycles to devote to 
documentation. Given these constraints, it's important that any effort 
allocated to documentation pays off..."
http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?219


[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.

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.]