[webdev] Web Design Update: November 9, 2007

Fri Nov 9 02:46:18 CST 2007

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 6, Issue 20, November 9, 2007.

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: EVALUATION & TESTING.
04: JAVASCRIPT
05: MISCELLANEOUS.
06: NAVIGATION.
07: PHP.
08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
09: TOOLS.
10: USABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Web Accessibility for Section 508
By Jim Thatcher.
"Web Accessibility for Section 508 Tutorial, originally written in 2001 
for the Information Technology Technical Assistance and Training Center 
(ITTATC) has now been completely revised."
http://www.jimthatcher.com/webcourse1.htm

Does Accessibility Cost More?
By Mike Cherim.
"What is the most accurate answer to this seemingly age-old question? 
Speaking for myself, I'd say it does cost more to create an accessible 
site. Cheaper alternatives exist on the world 'wild' web, but not on my 
menu - I only make accessible sites and won't entertain opportunities 
to make them otherwise. But my labors will cost the client more money 
than what they might spend on some low-end assembly-line site hammered 
out by a developer that doesn't care. And I feel absolutely justified 
in doing so. After all, creating a through-and-through quality, 
top-of-the-line accessible site does take time, extra attention to 
detail, and a sound knowledge of the requirements. This knowledge has 
value, quality takes time, and time is money..."
http://accessites.org/site/2007/11/does-accessibility-cost-more/

UK Government Accessibility Consultation
By Bruce Lawson.
"The UK government has issued a consultation document on Delivering 
Inclusive Websites..."
http://tinyurl.com/2y2yy2

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

CSS Attribute Selector Bug in Safari
By Christopher Schmitt.
"...The short version of the results is that Safari is wrong and the 
other major browsers that support attribute selectors appear to be 
getting it right. (Yes, that includes IE7)..."
http://tinyurl.com/28g4ay

PVII CSS Q.Tabs
By Al Sparber.
"Have you ever wanted to make simple and accessible navigation bars 
that were pure text but displayed as scalable graphical tabs with hover 
effects that behaved like image rollovers? We did too. So we wrote this 
tutorial..."
http://www.projectseven.com/tutorials/css/qtabs/index.htm

When the Legend Won't Wrap - One Solution
By Stephanie Sullivan.
"The answer lies in placing a span element directly inside the label 
element - <legend><span>Text within it</span><legend>..."
http://www.communitymx.com/blog/index.cfm?newsid=882

Using Multiple Classes Within Selectors
By Russ Weakley.
"While styling the menu, I came across an interesting problem. The 
Content management system was writing two classes into the same 
element, and there were times when I needed to use both of these 
classes for styling..."
http://www.maxdesign.com.au/2007/11/05/multiple-classes/

+03: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Web Metrics: Don't be a Slave to the Next HIT
By Gerry McGovern.
"Early website management was obsessed with volume. Today, an 
increasing number of page impressions can mean a website is failing 
rather than succeeding."
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2007/nt-2007-11-05-web-metrics.htm

Ask 37signals: Personas?
By Jason Fried.
"I've never been a big believer in personas. They're artificial, 
abstract, and fictitious. I don't think you can build a great product 
for a person that doesn't exist. And I definitely don't think you can 
build a great product based on a composite sketch of 10 different 
people all rolled into one (or two or three). Personas don't talk back. 
Personas can't answer questions. Personas don't have opinions. Personas 
can't tell you when something just doesn't feel right. Personas can't 
tell you when a sentence doesn't make sense. Personas don't get 
frustrated. Personas aren't pressed for time. Personas aren't moody. 
Personas can't click things. Personas can't make mistakes. Personas 
can't make value judgements. Personas don't use products. Personas 
aren't real."
http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/690-ask-37signals-personas

+04: JAVASCRIPT.

ARIA: Accessible Rich Internet Applications
By Mozilla.
"Firefox's implementation of Accessibility Rich Internet Applications 
(ARIA) allows desktop-style widgets such as tree views, menu bars and 
spreadsheets which are accessible both with the keyboard and assistive 
technologies such as screen readers, screen magnifiers and alternative 
input devices. It also helps provide accessibility solutions for 
AJAX-style live updates to regions on a page. ARIA, formerly known as 
DHTML accessibility, is a standard being developed at W3C - World Wide 
Web Consortium. All documents are available on the Protocols and 
Formats Working Group public page. This includes the ARIA roadmap, the 
ARIA roles spec and the states module..."
http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Accessible_DHTML

ARIA: Accessible Rich Internet Applications/Relationship to HTML FAQ
By Mozilla.
"...ARIA enhances the use of JavaScript, which is already available. 
New, interesting widgets can be developed today using HTML 4.01 and 
JavaScript -- and ARIA can already be used to describe accessibility 
for those widgets. Eventually HTML 5 will build in many of the most 
common use cases for ARIA -- such as progress meters, directly into 
easy-to-use elements. HTML 5 will ultimately make common things much 
easier to do. However, the need for ARIA goes beyond the time that HTML 
5 becomes a reality for authors. ARIA will be necessary for at least as 
long as authors want to develop their own widgets, until there is a 
ubiquitous cross-browser way to develop widgets (such as XBL)..."
http://tinyurl.com/35s9mj

ARIA Test Pages
By Illinois Center for Information Technology Accessibility.
"The Roadmap for Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA 
Roadmap) addresses the accessibility of dynamic Web content for people 
with disabilities. The roadmap outlines the technologies to map 
controls, AJAX live regions, and events to accessibility APIs, 
including custom controls used for Rich Internet Applications. The 
roadmap also outlines new navigation techniques to mark common Web 
structures as menus, primary content, secondary content, banner 
information and other types of Web structures. These new technologies 
can be used to improve the accessibility and usability of Web resources 
by people with disabilities, without extensive modification to existing 
libraries of Web resources."
http://test.cita.uiuc.edu/aria/

+05: MISCELLANEOUS.

Deadline First, Plan Second
By Meri Williams.
"...Deadline First, Plan Second describes the all-too-common phenomenon 
of project deadlines being set before any of the planning and 
estimating has been done..."
http://blog.geekmanager.co.uk/2007/10/30/deadline-first-plan-second/

Blasting the Myth of the Fold
Podcast with Milissa Tarquini
By Jeff Parks.
"They talk about how this long held rule in web design is being 
de-bunked by web analytics and user testing, as well as how this will 
impact design and development processes based on screen resolution and 
browser compatibility."
http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/blasting-the-myth-of16

+06: NAVIGATION.

Don't Click Here: The Art of Hyperlinking
By Jeff Atwood.
"I've often thought there is a subtle art to the humble hyperlink, that 
stalwart building block of hypertext, the stuff that Ted Nelson's 
Xanadu dream was made of..."
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000985.html

+07: PHP.

PHP Statements and Beginning Loops
By James Payne.
"We discussed statements briefly in our last article and even got a 
sneak peek of an IF-statement. Sure I mean, the image was blurry, and 
the moment it saw us it ran off into the forest. But we saw it. Honest. 
So in this article, we're going to take a much closer look at PHP 
statements and even start learning about loops..."
http://www.devshed.com/c/a/PHP/PHP-Statements-and-Beginning-Loops/

Suture CSS or JavaScript Files to Reduce HTTP Requests
By Andrew B. King.
"...This article shows how to 'suture' or merge CSS or JavaScript files 
together at the server to avoid costly HTTP requests, while still 
maintaining separation of logically discrete styles or behavior. 
Suturing can be done automatically with PHP or JSP code at the server, 
or by merging files manually by developers to minimize HTTP requests to 
avoid the slight overhead of auto-suturing."
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/suture/

Graceful E-Mail Obfuscation
By Roel Van Gils.
"Hide e-mail addresses from spam bots while revealing them to readers 
as real, clickable links. This transparent and fully automated solution 
guarantees that all addresses on your site will be safe-even the ones 
that show up in blog comments!..."
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/gracefulemailobfuscation

+08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

Designing With Web Standards Group Facebook Group
By Jeffery Zeldman.
"I am curious whether the new group will become a passive affinity 
group or something more. By passive affinity group, I mean the kind of 
group people join to show they belong - and then don't do much, if 
anything, once they've joined. For instance, hundreds of thousands of 
people joined a Facebook group in support of the monks' protest in 
Burma. Everyone who joined supports free speech and democracy, but only 
a tiny handful of group members create content or begin initiatives. 
For the few who are active, membership in the Burmese monk support 
group is an act of political and spiritual engagement. But for most 
members, it's passive. This is true of all social groups (online and 
off) and nearly all human activities..."
http://www.zeldman.com/2007/11/02/dwws-facebook-group/

POSH - Plain Old Semantic HTML
By Roger Johansson.
"For years I've been advocating the use of valid, semantic, accessible, 
well-structured HTML. It's a bit of a mouthful to say, but thanks to an 
acronym being coined on the Microformats IRC channel almost seven 
months ago, I can now start advocating the use of POSH instead..."
http://tinyurl.com/24jl6l

How to Use POSH
By Virginia DeBolt.
"POSH is Plain Old Semantic HTML. There's a movement afoot to bring 
everyone who creates Web pages into agreement to use POSH for Web page 
production. POSH is the building block of valid, semantic, accessible 
and interoperable websites..."
http://www.ehow.com/how_2112770_use-posh.html

The W3C process may be slow, but browser vendors are slower
By Roger Johansson.
"Every once in a while when someone gets frustrated by the lack of 
browser support for standards such as HTML and CSS (mostly CSS), the 
W3C is yelled at for being too slow. I think it's a little unfair..."
http://tinyurl.com/2eybo5

+09: TOOLS.

CSS 3 Quick Reference Panel
By Rijk van Geijtenbeek.
Rijk van Geijtenbeek has announced a CSS3 Quick reference in the form 
of a browser sidebar.
http://people.opera.com/rijk/panels/

+10: USABILITY.

High-Cost Usability Sometimes Makes Sense
By Jakob Nielsen.
"Computing the net present value (NPV) lets you estimate the most 
profitable level of usability investment. For big projects, expensive 
usability can pay off."
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/expensive-usability.html

Greatest Copy Shot Ever Written
By Nick Padmore.
"Got Milk?', 'Don't leave home without it', 'Good to the last drop.' 
You know these taglines and the products associated with them. So what 
makes a great copy shot? Is there a formula? And can understanding 
advertising help us write better web copy?"
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/greatestcopyshot

'Prettiness' is Relative
By Joe Dolson.
"Something which comes up over and over in my work is the tendency of 
clients to request design changes which I don't particularly care for. 
This isn't to say that they're ugly, per se - after all, the fact that 
I don't like them isn't actually equal to 'ugly.'..."
http://www.joedolson.com/articles/2007/11/prettiness-is-relative/

The Five Competencies of User Experience Design
By Steve Psomas.
"Throughout my career as a user experience designer, I have continually 
asked myself three questions..."
http://www.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000230.php

[Section one ends.]

++ SECTION TWO:

+11: 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.]