[webdev] Web Design Update: June 8, 2007

Fri Jun 8 06:30:18 CDT 2007

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 5, Issue 51, June 8, 2007.

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

++ISSUE 51 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: NAVIGATION.
10: PHP.
11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
12: TYPOGRAPHY.
13: USABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

WCAG 2.0 Lite
By Jack Pickard.
"...if you just want 'the checkpoints' in a smidge over 1000 words, 
then here's WCAG 2.0 Lite..."
http://www.thepickards.co.uk/index.php/200706/wcag-20-lite/

Berners-Lee Applies Web 2.0 to Improve Accessibility
By Out-Law.com.
"...'marshalling the community' to improve accessibility. He continued: 
'The Semantic Web lets you build a browser that is optimized for a 
particular disability.' A browser of the future would understand the 
raw data it is dealing with, rather than just displaying it. It would 
know how to make it accessible..."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/05/26/web_accessibility_seminar/

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Ordering the Link States
By Eric A. Meyer.
"Assuming we're going to avoid chaining pseudo-classes for a while yet, 
but that we want to introduce link-focus styles, where should it fit in 
link-state rules ordering?"
http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2007/06/04/ordering-the-link-states/

Create Complex Borders with Multiple Classes
By Kate Bolin.
"Styling a data table or other fancy piece of code and need complex 
border beauty?..."
http://tinyurl.com/yrmgn9

The CSS Working Group is Irrelevant
By Ian Hickson.
"...Someone really needs to do to CSS what the WHATWG has been doing to 
HTML..."
http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1181118077&count=1

+03: COLOR.

WCAG 2.0: Do You Have Enough Color Contrast on Your Web Site?
By Justin Thorp.
Ever go to a Web site where you feel you have to squint to read the 
text because the color contrast is so bad. Having appropriate color 
contrast on your Web site is very important. You may lose a chunk of 
your audience if they can't adequately read the text because of not 
enough contrast between background and foreground colors.
http://tinyurl.com/yv5xys

A New Web-Based Colour Vision Test
By City University London.
"...The movie below displays a moving 'colored' square that is buried 
in flickering luminance contrast noise. The square changes colour as 
the movie plays. You may be able to see the colour for some or all of 
the time. If you have some form of severe colour deficiency, you will 
have difficulty in seeing the 'colored' square moving all the time..."
http://www.city.ac.uk/avrc/colourtest.html

+04: DREAMWEAVER.

What's New in Adobe Dreamweaver CS3
By Donald Booth.
"Donald Booth of the Dreamweaver quality engineering team talks about 
his favorite features in Dreamweaver CS3."
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/videos/new_dreamweaver_cs3/

Format Web Pages With CSS in Dreamweaver CS3
By Betsy Bruce.
"There are three types of CSS rules, also called CSS styles, and in 
this sample chapter you'll learn how to use Dreamweaver CS3 to create 
styles that use all three. In just an hour's time, you'll learn the 
basics of CSS styles, how to use the CSS Styles panel, and how to 
create styles that apply to text."
http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=760959&rl=1

+05: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Eye Tracking - Eye Candy vs. I Can Do
By Mark McElhaw.
"Eye tracking has become more and more popular recently. But is it 
anything more than just 'eye candy' or does it offer something that's 
actually quite valuable? Our feature article this month explores the 
pros and cons of eye tracking, showing you when you should and perhaps 
shouldn't use it..."
http://tinyurl.com/28dmps

Usability Testing is Really Design Research
By Iain Barker.
"If I could do a bit of time travel I'd go back and change the term 
"usability testing". Although the title is quite descriptive, it is 
ultimately too close to "user acceptance testing". And the use of the 
testing word is definitely a problem."
http://tinyurl.com/24428e

Impediments to Seeing Information as a Task
By Gerry McGovern.
"Those who created information rarely had to worry about the impact of 
what they wrote. Until the Web."
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2007/nt-2007-06-04-web-writing.htm

Field Research Fundamentals: An Interview with Kate Gomoll
By Ashley McKee
"Kate Gomoll is a recognized expert in the area of Field Research and 
Usability Testing. UIE's Ashley McKee recently had the opportunity to 
talk with Kate about how she and her team at Gomoll Research and Design 
conduct field studies. Here is what Kate had to say about her 
experiences..."
http://www.uie.com/articles/gomoll_field_studies_interview/

Don't Ask -- Observe
By Jeff Atwood.
"...Don't get me wrong. I love users. Some of my best friends are 
users. But like all of us humans, they're unreliable at best. In order 
to move beyond usability guesswork, there's no substitute for observing 
customers using your product. Wouldn't it be liberating to be able to 
make design decisions based on the way your customers actually use your 
software, rather than the way they tell you they use it? Or the way you 
think they use it? Whether you're observing users in low-fi usability 
tests, or collecting user action data so you can observe users 
virtually, the goal is the same: don't ask -- observe."
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000880.html

+06: EVENTS.

Writing for the Web with Ginny Redish (UPA event)
June 12, 2007.
Austin, Texas, U.S.A.
http://tinyurl.com/26wky5

Universal Design Workshop
July 10-11, 2007.
Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, U.S.A.
http://www.cita.uiuc.edu/courses/2day/

Voices That Matter Web Design Conference
October 22-25, 2007.
San Francisco, California, U.S.A.
http://www.voicesthatmatter.com/webdesign2007/

+07: FLASH.

Captions for Video with Flash CS3
By Tom Green.
"Flash video can bring so much life to a web page, whether it's a 
personal message from a CEO or customer, a tutorial, or examples of 
products. The possibilities are virtually endless--unless, of course, 
you can't hear what's being said. Flash video expert Tom Green reports 
that the latest version of Flash makes captioning amazingly simple, 
compared to methods available in the past. He spells out the steps for 
one of two captioning methods in part one  of this series, and will 
follow up later with details on an alternative approach."
http://www.digital-web.com/articles/captions_flash_video/

+08: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

Card Sort Analysis Spreadsheet
By Donna Maurer.
"I have just uploaded something I've been working on for many years: 
the spreadsheet I use to analyses card sort data. My spreadsheet is 
great for analyzing open sorts - it manages participant results, helps 
you explore the data and does some basic statistical analysis..."
http://www.maadmob.net/donna/blog/archives/000760.html

+09: NAVIGATION.

Google Page Rank: What Do We Know About It?
By Vitaly Friedman and Sven Lennartz.
"Everybody is using it, but (almost) nobody really knows, how it works. 
Google PageRank is probably one of the most important algorithms ever 
developed for the Web..."
http://tinyurl.com/yvn5e8

+10: PHP.

PHP Abstract Episode 1 - PHP Security Tips
"PHP Abstract, the new PHP centric podcast is here. Sit back, relax, 
and let the funky beat wash over you. While you are at it, grab a 
nugget of information."
http://tinyurl.com/29gyf7

+11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

Headers Attribute Issue in HTML 5
By W3C HTML Working Group.
"Issue: The 'headers' attribute currently is not in the HTML 5 
specification." Pros and cons plus some research and advice.
http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/IssueTableHeaders

Headers Attribute Debate
By WAI and the PFWG (Al Gilman chair).
"One of your participants asked about the accessibility relevance of
the 'headers' attribute as supported in HTML 4.01. Here is a review of 
that issue..."
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007Jun/0145.html

The HTML Scope/Headers Debate
By Gez Lemon.
"The HTML working group have decided not to include the headers 
attribute in the HTML 5.0 working draft, as they believe the scope 
attribute is sufficient for associating header cells with data cells. 
With simple and most complex tables, this is a reasonable assertion, 
but doesn't work with overlaid and irregular tables, where the 
associated headers aren't in the same column or row..."
http://juicystudio.com/article/html-scope-headers-debate.php

+12: TYPOGRAPHY.

Improving Accessibility Through Typography
By Joe Dolson.
"Among the many decisions you need to make when designing accessible 
web sites, typography seems to frequently be only shallowly addressed. 
Typography is rarely completely ignored --- but it is greatly 
simplified, to a point that the issues raised don't always complete the 
picture of accessible text. Accessible typography is commonly 
simplified to these three questions.."
http://tinyurl.com/2wf3ty

+13: USABILITY.

Content and Usability: Writing for the Web
By Trenton Moss.
"Writing for the web is totally different to writing for printed matter 
- find out how to write content for this medium with these eight 
guidelines."
http://tinyurl.com/bb6sw

Homepage Usability and Credibility Survey
By Andrew B. King.
"A usability survey revealed that high growth companies are not 
evaluating and improving their home page designs in a systematic way. 
By comparing the home pages of the Fortune 30 against Inc Magazine's 
fastest growing companies, researchers from State University found the 
Fortune 30 had a usability score over 36% higher than the fast growing 
companies."
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/homepage/

What Does Rich Mean?
By Uday Gajendar.
"Amid the current hype of Web 2.0, rich has become the de facto 
buzzword suggesting fresh, sexy digital products, often marked by 
glossy buttons with AJAX-driven behaviors. But what does rich mean to a 
UI (user interface) designer who wants to craft intelligent, 
compelling, and memorable interactions? Given current digital and 
technological trends, today's UI designers must deepen their 
understanding of richness. Such an effort will strengthen designers' 
vocabularies (adding legitimacy and weight to client discussions), and 
enable designers to temper judgment when it comes to applying rich 
capabilities..."
http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/what-does-rich-mean

[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 
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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 
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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.]