[webdev] Web Design Update: September 21, 2007

Thu Sep 20 06:23:36 CDT 2007

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 6, Issue 13, September 20, 2007.

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

++ISSUE 13 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: MISCELLANEOUS.
05: NAVIGATION.
06: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
07: TYPOGRAPHY.

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

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Working with Legacy Websites
By Joe Dolson.
"This is a task which comes up over and over again for many developers. 
There are a lot of jobs in maintaining web sites. Our work doesn't 
always come with the dream experience of a brand-new web site. Even if 
a new web site is a major goal, there will inevitably be large 
quantities of legacy content which will need to be worked into the new 
accessible design. Working on legacy web sites can pose a number of 
subtle challenges..."
http://www.joedolson.com/articles/2007/09/working-with-legacy-websites/

How to Make Your Blog Accessible to Blind Readers
By American Foundation for the Blind.
"So you have a blog, and you're worried that it might not be accessible 
to people with disabilities? Don't worry! A few simple changes can 
increase your blog's potential readership."
http://www.afb.org/Section.asp?SectionID=57&TopicID=167&DocumentID=2757

The longdesc Lottery
By Mark Pilgrim.
"...I'm not saying there isn't a real problem to be solved here. There 
is. People can publish complex images that require complex text 
alternatives. Charts, graphs, detailed photographs. Whatever. 'A 
picture is worth 1000 words,' and all that. The longdesc attribute is, 
theoretically, a solution to this problem. But that doesn't mean it's a 
good solution, and it's certainly not the only solution. We've been 
living with longdesc for 10 years now, and let me tell you, it's not 
working out..."
http://blog.whatwg.org/the-longdesc-lottery

The longdesc Lottery Comment
By Steve Faulkner.
"While I agree that the longdesc attribute has not been successful in 
providing a solution to the problem, it has been removed from the draft 
spec without the spec providing an alternative mechanism. In the spec 
it is not acknowledged that there is a real problem to be solved. It 
should at least be stated in the spec that there is a need for a 
mechanism to explicitly associate an extended description of an image. 
whether that be the longdesc or some other mechanism is open for 
debate..."
http://blog.whatwg.org/the-longdesc-lottery#comment-8912

Parroting Pareto
By Jeremy Keith.
"...I'm concerned by Mark Pilgrim's dismissal of the longdesc 
attribute. It's a well-reasoned dismissal founded almost entirely on 
existing behavior: most people aren't publishing images using longdesc, 
therefore it should be dropped. Similar research has been used to 
justify the non-requirement of the alt attribute and, God help us all, 
the reintroduction of the font element. It's all very well-reasoned and 
logical. It's also, in my opinion, wrong. We know that most Web pages 
are crap?Sturgeon's Law is a relative of the Pareto principle. If 
existing behavior is given such importance in the development of HTML5, 
then the format will only end up codifying what most people are 
publishing: crap, in other words. The longdesc situation is a classic 
case in point. Here's an attribute that is actually supported in 
assistive technology; an unusual situation, given Freedom Scientific's 
usual glacial pace. That's not the problem. The problem is that not 
many people are implementing longdesc. The solution is either: 1. 
educate publishers or 2. provide an alternative and lobby screen-reader 
manufacturers to implement it..."
http://adactio.com/journal/1343

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

CSS: Flashy Links
By Mike Cherim.
"This Flashy Links experiment takes some of the effects of Flash ? put 
in a GIF animation ? and combines them with CSS for better 
accessibility. And more purity for those who deem that important..."
http://mikecherim.com/gbcms_xml/news_page.php?id=25

Using Persistent Styles with Multiple Style Sheets
By Alejandro Gervasio.
"Welcome to the second tutorial of the series that began with "Working 
with Multiple Style Sheets." As the title suggests, this instructive 
series shows you how to use several style sheets attached to a given 
web document, and provides examples of the most common cases, ranging 
from working with alternate style sheets to using persistent style 
sheets..."
http://tinyurl.com/yp2jjs

+03: EVENTS.

Computer, Information, and Systems Sciences, and Engineering (CISSE 
2007)
December 3-12, 2007.
International Conference held entirely on-line.
http://www.cisse2007online.org/

+04: MISCELLANEOUS.

How to be an Empathic Web Designer
By Joshua Porter.
"Part of being a web designer is trying to understand and make sense of 
how people are using your design. Therefore, being empathic, or having 
the ability to share and understand the feelings of another, is a 
valuable trait to have. The more empathic you are, the more you can 
understand how people are using your design, how they think and feel 
about it, and what you need to do to make it great. But how do you 
become empathic? What if you're not naturally an empathic person? Here 
are a few things I try to keep in mind when I feel like I'm getting too 
far away from the people I design for..."
http://bokardo.com/archives/how-to-be-an-empathic-web-designer/

Contract Killers
By Andy Budd.
"It's the sticky moment in any negotiation with a potential new
client?no matter how great your proposal, you're still going to
have to deliver The Quote. But how do you arrive at that magic
figure, taking into account the unpredictability of developing for
the next generation of the web? Andy Budd, no stranger to client
work, takes a look at a new way to cost out your projects."
http://www.digital-web.com/articles/contract_killers/

Listen to Me!: Interview with Eric Meyer (Podcast)
By Tommy Olsson and Sara Smith.
"This summer I got an offer I couldn't refuse: would I like to co-host 
an interview with Eric Meyer? You bet I do! It was Sara Smith who asked 
me to help her with a pod cast interview with Eric Meyer for
Search-This..."
http://www.autisticcuckoo.net/archive.php?id=2007/09/18/listen-to-me

+05: NAVIGATION.

Tabs, Used Right
By Jakob Nielsen.
"13 design guidelines for tab controls are all followed by Yahoo 
Finance, but usability suffers somewhat due to AJAX overkill and 
difficult customization."
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/tabs.html

Click Here Links
By Free Usability Advice.
"Question: My company's site has links that say “click here” or “click 
here for more info”. I think our links should be more specific, but 
other people here say it's OK because they see it on other websites. 
What do you think?..."
http://freeusabilityadvice.com/archive/43/click-here-links

+06: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

Feedback on Accessibility Concerns in HTML5
By Cathrine Roy.
"In an effort to get some user feedback and to jump start discussions 
in the French community concerning what has been proposed by HTML5 with 
regards to accessibility, namely the alt, longdesc and headers 
attributes, I started a thread over at the French mailing list 
Accessiweb a few days ago...This is obviously not a scientific survey 
(nor a scientific report) but an attempt to get user feedback and to 
get discussions started in my community about what is being proposed 
for accessibility and what the impact may be on users. However, I hope 
it can be of use to this group and to the issues at large."
http://www.catherine-roy.net/html5_feedback.html

W3C GRDDL Recommendation Bridges HTML/Microformats and the Semantic Web
By Robin Cover.
"The World Wide Web Consortium has announced the publication of 
Gleaning Resource Descriptions from Dialects of Languages (GRDDL) as a 
W3C Recommendation, together with a separate GRDDL Test Cases 
Recommendation. The GRDDL specification represents "an important link 
between Semantic Web and microformats communities. With GRDDL 
(pronounced 'griddle'), software can automatically extract information 
from structured Web pages to make it part of the Semantic Web. Those 
accustomed to expressing structured data with microformats in XHTML can 
thus increase the value of their existing data by porting it to the 
Semantic Web, at very low cost..."
http://xml.coverpages.org/ni2007-09-13-a.html

+07: TYPOGRAPHY.

Teach a Man to Fish (or How to Resize Text)
By Ian Lloyd.
"My esteemed colleague Patrick Lauke is a firm believer in not 
providing widgets on individual web pages to do things such as resizing 
text on a page - on the basis that it's site-specific and doesn't teach 
the user how to change the font size for other web sites that don't 
provide these controls. This issue pops up time and time again, and it 
has done again on another forum where the phrase ‘teach a man to fish' 
has appeared once more. It got me thinking, maybe it would be best to 
show the user how to change the font size rather than simply describe 
it. With that in mind, I put together some video clips, joined them 
together in iMovie and did a voice-over to explain how it's possible. 
Here's the end result..."
http://tinyurl.com/yns4x6

[Section one ends.]

++ SECTION TWO:

+08: 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.]