[webdev] Web Design Update: July 12, 2007

Thu Jul 12 06:17:34 CDT 2007

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 6, Issue 03, July 12, 2007.

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

++ISSUE 01 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: FLASH.
05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.
06: JAVASCRIPT.
07: MISCELLANEOUS.
08: NAVIGATION.
09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
10: TOOLS.
11: USABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Accessibility and 508: A Guide to Web Standards and Government 
Regulations
By Bevi Chagnon.
"...This comprehensive overview clears up the confusion by reviewing 
what the standards are, who's affected by the government regulations, 
and what you must do - or are encouraged to do - to be compliant..."
http://www.communitymx.com/abstract.cfm?cid=C1B66

WCAG 2.0 Testability: Testing Times and Tetchiness
By Jack Pickard.
"One of the key concepts of WCAG 2.0 is testability. This is about 
ensuring that each success criterion can be tested either by a machine, 
or manually in such a way that at least 80% of the human testers would 
agree whether it is a success or a failure..."
http://tinyurl.com/ynlfew

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Cascading Style Sheets Part 2: Shorthand
By Sarah Horton.
"There's something oddly satisfying about styling a heading using one 
line and 65 characters rather than nine lines and 128 characters. Such 
are the savings when you use CSS shorthand..."
http://www.informit.com/guides/content.asp?g=webdesign&seqNum=329&f1

New Guillotine case in Internet Explorer (IE7)
By Stephanie Sullivan.
"Yes, it's a fact that Internet Explorer 7 is better than Internet 
Explorer 6. But not all squashed bugs were completely killed. Like the 
little gopher game you play at the fair, sometimes when you bang one on 
the head and it goes underground, it simply pops back out in a 
different place. Enter the Guillotine Bug..."
http://www.communitymx.com/blog/index.cfm?newsid=868

Styling Figures with CSS3
By David Storey.
"...I was discussing the difference between opacity and RGBA in the 
office, and thought that it would be useful to write an example showing 
what the later can be useful for..."
http://www.css3.info/styling-figures-with-css3/

Understanding Pseudo-Elements
By Jonathan Snook.
"In CSS, there are certain selectors you can use that act like you've 
injected new HTML into the page and have the flexibility to style those 
new imaginary elements. These are known as pseudo-elements..."
http://snook.ca/archives/html_and_css/understanding_pseudo_elements/

The Obsolescence of Handheld Style Sheets?
By Mike Cherim.
"On any fixed-width designs I currently create I offer a handheld style 
sheet for those users who may access these sites via a smart phone or 
other handheld device. I feel this is needed in this day and age; I 
want to make sure those skinny screen users have decent experience on 
my sites and find it accessible and usable. But will this need become 
less important, even unnecessary in a few years?..."
http://green-beast.com/blog/?p=198

What CSS 3 Can You Easily Use Right Now?
By Peter Gasston.
"The short answer: None of it. The Slightly longer answer..."
http://www.css3.info/what-css-3-can-you-safely-use-right-now/

+03: EVENTS.

Access Developer Day at Linux World 2007
August 7, 2007.
San Francisco, California U.S.A.
http://www.access-company.com/developers/events/linuxworld/index.html

+04: FLASH.

Captions for Video with Flash CS3 (Part Two)
By Tom Green.
"Do you think Flash video and accessibility can't peacefully coexist? 
Think again. Flash video expert Tom Green is back with the second 
installment of his popular captioning how-to. In "Captions for Video 
with Flash CS3 (Part One)", we learned how to caption using the 
Timed-Text XML standard. This week's follow-up brings an even easier 
method: embedding the XML right in the Flash video file..."
http://www.digital-web.com/articles/captions_flash_video_2/

+05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

Faceted Feature Analysis
By Adam Polansky.
"This article explains a process called 'Faceted Feature Analysis.' 
It's an exercise that I've been using for nearly 8 years on projects 
both large and small. The facets refer to three characterizing facets 
in any project: business value, ease of implementation, and user value. 
Faceted Feature Analysis also uses three constraints that govern every 
project: cost, time, and quality. By crossing the characterizing facets 
with constraints, you are combining the subjective needs of the project 
stakeholders with the objective constraints of the project in a way 
that ensures all points of view are fairly considered. It also ensures 
that a project requirement is not included or excluded simply because 
one person yelled louder than the others. The process involves six 
steps..."
http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/faceted-feature

+06: JAVASCRIPT.

Is Manipulating the DOM for Presentation Acceptable?
By Jonathan Christopher.
"Personally, I'm a big proponent of both progressive enhancement as 
well as graceful degradation (fault tolerance). While both concepts are 
similar in nature, they both possess small unique parts that set them 
apart. To me, keeping graceful degradation in mind while developing 
will aim to leave you with a functioning document no matter the 
circumstances. Progressive enhancement on the other hand, is a level of 
functionality present only if the reader has the needed technology 
readily available. While it may seem that both are nearly identical, to 
me graceful degradation seems to be more passive in nature when 
comparing it to progressive enhancement, which is a more active. 
Progressively enhancing a document gives the ability to make 
alterations where applicable in an effort to make a document that much 
more useful, while graceful degradation is more of a fall back plan..."
http://tinyurl.com/2b45r9

Thinking lowsrc - How to Make Sites Appear to be Available a Lot Faster
By Christian Heilmann.
"Those of you who've been around some years may remember an otherwise 
forgotten non-standardized HTML attribute called lowsrc. It was 
supported by Netscape browsers and allowed you to define a black and 
white preview picture of the real picture. The browser would load the 
'diet' black and white shot first and then load the 'full fat' colour 
shot and overlay the preview picture line by line. Alongside 
progressive JPGs (which load in lower quality first and then 
progressively get clearer) and interlaced GIFs (which loaded every 
second line first and then subsequently filled up the rest) this was a 
killer trick to speed up your web site in the times when 56K Modems 
were luxury items..."
http://www.wait-till-i.com/index.php?p=464

Return of the HTTP Overhead Delay - This Time Without a Server Side 
Component
By Christian Heilmann.
"Following my post yesterday about delaying the loading of avatar 
images to cut down on HTTP requests I was wondering if there is a way 
to do this without having to resort to a server side solution. In 
short, there is. Check out the demo page to see the script in action, 
and download delayHTTPoverhead.js to use in your own sites..."
http://www.wait-till-i.com/index.php?p=465

Insert in Place Without document.write
By James Edwards.
"So here's the situation: you want to syndicate some content using 
JavaScript to pull in the data (like AdWords or similar programs). The 
syndication script can't know anything about the page it's being used 
on - so it can't have a dependency on the existence of particular 
elements. Yet the host page needs to be able to control where the 
content is inserted - the syndication script needs to insert the 
content wherever the <script> tag is. How do you do it?..."
http://tinyurl.com/29te9r

+07: MISCELLANEOUS.

Tim Berners-Lee Interview: The Future Of the Web as Seen by Its Creator
By Peter Moon.
"I think that slowly the Internet will get more bureaucracy. I think 
it's inevitable. It's important to allow people in different countries, 
developing countries, to develop their use of the Internet as quickly 
as possible. But the administration of something so big will never be 
controlled by a unique bureaucracy. I don't know what form that 
bureaucracy will take, since there is a lot of politics involved. But I 
would say it's very important that it should be government free and 
without censoring the people who use it."
http://www.itworld.com/Tech/4535/070709future/

The Web is Messy
By Gerry McGovern.
"The nature of the Web is not neat and tidy. A website is not a project 
but rather a process of continuous improvement..."
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2007/nt-2007-07-09-messy.htm

Audio and Notes for Joe Clark's @media2007 Session
The audio from Joe Clark's thought provoking session, delivered at 
@media2007 Europe, is now available - When web accessibility is not 
your problem (MP3, 28MB).
http://tinyurl.com/32bp5c

Five Things All Clients Want to Know
By Russ Weakley.
"I meet potential clients on a regular basis. The first meeting can 
often determine if you win or lose a job. So, what can you do to 
convince a client that you are right for the job? Over the years, I 
have found that most clients don't want a sales pitch, they want 
reassurance. They want to know if you can be trusted to help them solve 
their problem. The most common questions that they are likely to ask 
include..."
http://www.maxdesign.com.au/2007/07/10/five-things-clients/

+08: NAVIGATION.

More on In-page Links and the IE Bug
By Jim Thatcher.
"I have been writing about this problem on and off for about 2 years, 
first the article on skip navigation links; then information about the 
hasLayout property and how that relates to the IE bug. There is even 
mention of this issue in Chapter 7 of the new Web Accessibility book. 
But a couple of days ago I received an email from Andrea Fercia in 
Milan, Italy, and she suggested a simple approach to the problem..."
http://www.jimthatcher.com/news.htm#inpage

+09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

W3C Supporters Program
By W3C.
A W3C paid link farm.
http://www.w3.org/Consortium/sup

Why HTML 5 Specification Matters?
By Karl Dubost.
"This is a simple story. The story of an HTML bug. Like every stories, 
it could start with- Once upon a time, there was a bug..."
http://www.w3.org/QA/2007/07/why-html-5-matters.html

Blue Sky Browser Summit Review: XTech Paris, May 15, 2007
By Molly Holzschlag.
"...Anne Van Kesteren, who works with Opera Software and is an active 
member of the WHAT WG commented that he felt these concerns were far 
less problematic than people think, and that with the commitment from 
the W3C's HTML WG to adopt the WHAT WG's HTML5, this was a very 
positive step forward for the future of HTML. Of course, arguments, 
particularly regarding <canvas> and accessibility, remain at the heart 
of the debate with no clear solutions in sight..."
http://2007.xtech.org/public/content/2007/06/12-summit-wrapup

+10: TOOLS.

The CSS Redundancy Checker
By Google.
A tool for checking your markup for outdated CSS rules that don't match 
any of your HTML. "...you'll need Rubygems and Hpricot, plus a 
reasonably up-to-date version of Ruby..."
http://code.google.com/p/css-redundancy-checker/

Colour Contrast Analyser for MAC
By Cedric Trevisan of TPG (Europe) and WAT-C.
"A MAC version of the Contrast Analyser has been developed by Cedric 
Trevisan (TPG). The interface is similar to the windows version...at 
this stage the CCA MAC does not have the image simulation features 
found in the windows version."
http://tinyurl.com/2y6tjh

+11: USABILITY.

Users Gain Freedom in a Designer Keeping Control
By Natalie Jost.
"...There's clearly nothing wrong with designing for the user, to make 
them comfortable, to guide their path through a site. But, there is a 
line where the user can been given too much control over too many 
pieces of the site which are unnecessary and it is this line where the 
designer will lose the user. Sometimes (more advanced) users will want 
control. It is possible, ideal even, to consider the needs of the user 
before ever reaching the point of handing design decisions to them..."
http://tinyurl.com/yw2ypt

Write Articles, Not Blog Postings
By Jakob Nielsen.
"To demonstrate world-class expertise, avoid quickly written, shallow 
postings. Instead, invest your time in thorough, value-added content 
that attracts paying customers..."
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/articles-not-blogs.html

[Section one ends.]

++ SECTION TWO:

+12: 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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+ 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.]