[webdev] Web Design Update: May 5, 2006

Fri May 5 06:27:55 CDT 2006

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 4, Issue 46, May 5, 2006.

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

++ISSUE 46 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: JAVASCRIPT.
07: MISCELLANEOUS.
08: NAVIGATION.
09: PHP.
10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
11: TOOLS.
12: TYPOGRAPHY.
13: USABILITY.
14: XML.

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

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Board to Create Advisory Committee for Refresh of 508 Standards
By The Access Board.
"The Board is organizing an advisory committee to assist in the update 
of its access standards for electronic and information technology and 
its guidelines for telecommunications products. This committee will 
review these standards and guidelines and provide recommendations to 
the Board on how they should be updated. The Board is seeking 
representatives from interested organizations and agencies to serve on 
the committee..."
http://www.access-board.gov/news/508committee-notice.htm

Last Call Working Draft of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0
By Patrick H. Lauke.
"A Last Call Working Draft of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 
2.0 (WCAG 2.0) as well as two supporting documents were published 27 
April 2006. W3C strongly encourages broad community review of this Last 
Call Working Draft, and submission of comments on any issues which you 
feel could present a significant barrier to future adoption and 
implementation of WCAG 2.0."
http://accessify.com/2006/04/last-call-working-draft-of-web-content.php

Boiler-Plate Accessibility Statement
By Thierry Koblentz et al.
This is a template created by Thierry with the help of fellow GAWDs 
members.
http://www.tjkdesign.com/articles/standard_accessibility_statement.asp

Nearly 75 Percent of FTSE 100 Company Websites Fail to Meet Minimum 
Accessibility Requirements
By Nomensa.
"Companies exclude over £80 billion in revenue and leave themselves 
exposed to legal action for ignoring the Disability Discrimination Act 
(DDA)."
http://tinyurl.com/syvz4

Inclusion Of Cognitive Disabilities in the Web Accessibility Movement
By Lisa Seeman.
"This paper explores the attitude and accomplishments towards including 
Cognitive Disabilities within the Web Accessibility movement. It then 
suggests practical steps that could be taken to increase the usefulness 
of Web Accessibility for the Cognitively Disabled. These steps include 
1. Increasing the number of practical techniques developed to aid web 
authors produce material which is more accessible to people with 
Cognitive Disabilities, and 2. Adjusting the definition of minimal 
accessibility."
http://www2002.org/CDROM/alternate/689/

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Close Gaps Next to Floated Images in Internet Explorer
By Zoe Gillenwater.
"One of the most common tasks when laying out the content of a web page 
is floating images to the right or left so that text flows around them 
- something very easy to do in CSS. But when an image has the clear 
property set on it in addition to the float property, large gaps in the 
content can appear in Internet Explorer. Unlike many of IE's bugs, this 
one doesn't fall to its typical hacks. But, it can be fixed. In this 
tutorial, you'll learn two fixes for this IE bug."
http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=B03A6

Eric Meyer: 'The One True Layout'
By Joe Clark.
Joe Clark live blogs Eric's IceWeb 2006 presentation.
http://blog.fawny.org/2006/04/28/iceweb-meyer/

Dave Shea: 'CSS Project Management'
By Joe Clark.
Joe Clark live blogs Eric's IceWeb 2006 presentation.
http://blog.fawny.org/2006/04/28/iceweb-dave/

+03: DREAMWEAVER.

Microformats Extensions
By The Web Standards Project.
"Part of the remit of the Dreamweaver Task Force is to work with the 
online Dreamweaver community to encourage and assist in the adoption of 
web standards. Whilst a lot of our effort has been to work alongside 
Macromedia to help shape the support for standards within the 
Dreamweaver product line (after all, there's no point us tell you guys 
to use standards if the tool makes it hard to do so), there are some 
things it's not reasonable to expect the Dreamweaver engineers to 
tackle right away."
http://www.webstandards.org/action/dwtf/microformats/

Dreamweaver 8 Loses FTP Login Settings
By Adobe Formerly Macromedia.
"TechNote: Some Windows users are reporting that their FTP usernames 
and passwords in their Dreamweaver site definitions are deleted when 
they close and re-open Dreamweaver 8 or when they reboot their machine. 
This issue does not occur in Dreamweaver MX 2004 or Dreamweaver MX."
http://tinyurl.com/ncp7f

+04: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Usability Testing Tools and Templates
By Usability.gov.
Materials include planning documents, testing forms, and test report 
templates.
http://www.usability.gov/templates/

+05: EVENTS.

The Web and Beyond
June 8, 2006.
Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
http://www.thewebandbeyond.nl/

+06: JAVASCRIPT.

Object Oriented Javascript - Part 2
By Guyon Roche.
"In the previous article you learned how JavaScript classes could be 
written to inherit the methods and properties of another class. In this 
article you'll learn about some extensions that will allow developers 
to extend intrinsic JavaScript classes such as String, Date and Array."
http://tinyurl.com/qhygm

IE 7 and JavaScript: What Needs to be Fixed?
By Peter-Paul Koch.
"...everybody knows there are a few things lacking in IE's JavaScript 
support. The point of this entry is to start creating a list with 
specific wishes for JavaScript improvements in IE. When it's done and 
when Microsoft starts thinking about the next version we can present 
it..."
http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2006/04/ie_7_and_javasc.html

getElementsByClassName Deluxe Edition
By Stuart Colville.
"Anyone who's into javascript will most likely have written their own 
take on a getElementsByClassName function. I had a look around at a few 
recent examples and then decided to do my own version for fun. Out of 
all of the functions I looked at Robert Nyman's came closest to what I 
wanted (kudos!) but my version has a few subtle differences up it's 
sleeve."
http://tinyurl.com/ln4dd

+07: MISCELLANEOUS.

Defining the Problem with Tom Chi
By Luke Wroblewski.
"...designers are often able to reframe business 'problems' to better 
communicate existing and potential relationships (and outcomes) between 
the market, customer goals, and product ecosystems. To further 
illustrate this point, I've asked a few seasoned designers that have 
successfully defined or re-defined business strategies to share their 
experiences defining problems."
http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?336

The Ideas Interview William Davies
By John Sutherland.
"Have computers and mobile phones really made the world a better place? 
John Sutherland meets a man who says no..."
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1765576,00.html

+08: NAVIGATION.

Maximum Number of Hyperlinks on a Page
By Free Usability Advice.
"Question: Are there any usability guidelines in respect to hyperlinks? 
In particular reference to the number of them on any given screen i.e. 
a page with say 50 hyperlinks."
http://tinyurl.com/qykkf

Search Engine Optimization: Beyond Search Keywords
By Gerry McGovern.
"The words people type into a search box are not always the words
they like to read when they click on the search result. Here's
why..."
http://tinyurl.com/jdueu

+09: PHP.

Introduction to Maintaining the State of Applications with PHP Sessions
By Alejandro Gervasio.
"n PHP, session management is used to help web applications maintain 
their state across several HTTP requests when needed. In this first 
part of a series, you will learn the basics of the PHP built-in session 
mechanism, as well as some of its many useful functions."
http://tinyurl.com/md4wb

Clue Sheet - Tips for PHP Developers
Trevor Lowing.
Trevor Lowing, an attendee of the php|architect php|tek conference for 
this year has compiled a list of the things he learned and the people 
he met while at the conference, including links to various resources on 
each topic.
http://www.cluesheet.com/

Designing a Database-driven PHP App? Don't Forget the Data!!
By 0_o.
"If you have a sourceforge account, and are on your way to becoming the 
best thing to happen to the web since Yahoo or Google, then I beg of 
you to put a call out for people who understand database design 
fundamentals."
http://tinyurl.com/p8pxg

+10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

Neutrality of the Net
By Tim Berners-Lee.
"This is an international issue. In some countries it is addressed 
better than others. (In France, for example, I understand that the 
layers are separated, and my colleague in Paris attributes getting 
24Mb/s net, a phone with free international dialing and digital TV for 
30euros/month to the resulting competition.) In the US, there have been 
threats to the concept, and a wide discussion about what to do. That is 
why, though I have written and spoken on this many times, I blog about 
it now....Let us protect the neutrality of the net."
http://dig.csail.mit.edu/breadcrumbs/node/132

+11: TOOLS.

Spanky Corners
By Alex Walker.
"'Spanky Corners' is an experimental technique for using only CSS to 
produced 'round-cornered content boxes' with semantically pure markup. 
It does not require JavaScript to work."
http://tools.sitepoint.com/spanky/

+12: TYPOGRAPHY.

Convert Graphic Text to Styled Text
By Andrew B. King.
"Converting graphic text to styled text speeds up your site by 
minimizing HTTP requests and reducing page weight. Resizable text, 
better SEO rankings, and lower maintenance costs make CSS text a 
superior alternative to pixing your text in stone."
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/text/

+13: USABILITY.

Colons at the End of Labels?
By Ann Light.
"...The fact is that in over 15 years of testing all sorts of forms - 
paper, web, application, you name it - NEVER ONCE has any user 
commented on the presence or absence of colons. They don't notice them. 
They don't care. And so I have learned not to care either...So the 
thing to do is pick one method and stick with it..."
http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article3112.asp

How to Indicate Required or Optional Form Fields
By Thomas Watson Steen.
"There are generally two ways of showing required and optional fields: 
1. Grouping required and optional fields in different groups 
(fieldsets) and 2. Indicating next to each field or label if this field 
is required or not."
http://tinyurl.com/zqcxa

Corporate Usability Maturity, Stages 5-8	
By Jakob Nielsen.
"An organization that reaches the managed usability stage still has
far to go to reach usability nirvana. Attaining these higher maturity 
levels requires many years of effort."
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/process_maturity.html

+14: XML.

Microformats
"Designed for humans first and machines second, microformats are a set 
of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted 
standards. Instead of throwing away what works today, microformats 
intend to solve simpler problems first by adapting to current behaviors 
and usage patterns (e.g. XHTML, blogging)."
http://microformats.org/

What Are Microformats
By Micah Dubinko.
"Micah Dubinko asks what microformats are and whether they are here to 
stay."
http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2005/03/23/deviant.html

Microformats and Web 2.0
By Micah Dubinko.
"Micah Dubinko begins a new column, XML Annoyances, which will explore 
what's happening to and with XML, and beyond, as the era of core XML 
specifications comes to a close. Micah will be paying special attention 
to the parts of XML that don't seem to work as well as they should--or 
just the parts that are the most annoying. In this first column, he 
looks at the role of microformats in Web 2.0 apps and services."
http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2005/10/19/microformats-and-web-2.0.html

Microformats in Context
By Uche Ogbuji.
"Uche Ogbuji takes a careful look at microformats and concludes that 
while, in practice, they suffer from serious non-trivial problems, the 
basic idea offers an interesting basis upon which to build interesting 
data formats, particularly in conjunction with complementary 
technologies."
http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2006/04/26/microformats-grddl-rdfa-nvdl.html

[Section one ends.]

++ SECTION TWO:

+15: 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.

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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.]