[webdev] Web Design Update: April 10, 2008

Thu Apr 10 06:19:55 CDT 2008

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 6, Issue 42, April 10, 2008.

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

++ISSUE 42 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: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.
05: JAVASCRIPT.
06: MISCELLANEOUS.
07: NAVIGATION.
08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
09: TYPOGRAPHY.
10: USABILITY.
11: XML.

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

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Refreshed Accessibility Standards and Guidelines in Telecommunications 
and Electronic and Information Technology
By Advisory Committee to the Access Board.
"This report is a set of recommendations from the Advisory Committee to 
the Access Board.  Any proposed revisions to the Section 508 standards 
or the Section 255 accessibility guidelines will be made through the 
Federal rulemaking process.  This report is not a regulation."
http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/refresh/report/

Presentation of the TEITAC report to the U.S. Access Board
By Peter Korn.
"...the Telecommunications and Electronic and Information Technology 
Advisory Committee (or TEITAC for short) presented their final report 
to the United States Access Board. It was the culmination of more than 
18 months of very hard work by a very talented group of 41 
representatives and their alternates who were representing their 
respective companies, disability organizations, government agencies, 
and countries."
http://blogs.sun.com/korn/entry/presentation_of_the_teitac_report

Accessible Data Visualization with Web Standards
By Wilson Miner.
"When designing interfaces for browsing data-driven sites, creating 
navigation elements that are also visualization tools helps the user 
make better decisions. Wilson Miner demonstrates three techniques for 
incorporating data visualization into standards-based navigation 
patterns."
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/accessibledatavisualization

Is Your Moodle Accessible?
By John E. Brandt.
"The following information was presented at a workshop in October 2007 
at the MainEducation Conference of ACTEM."
http://www.jebswebs.com/index.php/articles-and-resources

Moodle Accessibility WebAIM Thread
By Jan Heck.
"...What is the good (and not so good) word about Moodle's 
accessibility?..."
http://www.webaim.org/discussion/mail_thread.php?thread=3522

Common Issues
By Alastair Campbell.
"Nomensa's director of user experience, Alastair Campbell, reviews the 
past year of accessibility checks and tackles the most common issues..."
http://www.netmag.co.uk/zine/home/common-issues

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Top-Down Approach to Simplify Your CSS Code
By Antonio Lupetti.
"Today I want to return to talk about a topic very popular on my blog 
about which I already dedicated two popular post (optimize your CSS 
files to improve code readability and write a well structured CSS file 
without becoming crazy). Now I want to try to reply to this question I 
often receive from some readers of this blog: What is the correct 
approach to design a CSS file?..."
http://tinyurl.com/5cysa8

Most Useful 50 CSS Tips And Tools For Webmasters
By Emma Alvarez.
"...Here you are a list of the 50 most useful tips and tools for 
customizing your website easily with CSS..."
http://tinyurl.com/5dsoce

Nice Drop Caps with CSS
By Fabian van Luyn.
"There are a lot of websites using a extra <span>-tag for the drop cap. 
But using the :first-letter pseudo-element, you can easily create nice 
drop caps with CSS. :first-letter will - how surprising - target the 
first letter of an element. This pseudo element is included in CSS 1, 
so the browser support is very good. It's supported by IE5+, Let's 
design some nice drop caps with CSS..."
http://www.onyx-design.net/weblog2/css/nice-drop-caps-with-css/

Tomorrow's CSS Today: 8 Techniques They Don't Want You To Know
By Tim Wright.
"Sick of hearing about great CSS features you can't use? Find yourself 
playing it safe with CSS when building web sites? Wondering where went 
yesterday's promise of a bright future with CSS? Future CSS support is 
closer than you think! Tim shows 8 advanced CSS features you can use to 
add some pizzazz to your web pages today."
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/tomorrows-css-today

Project Gmail Grimace - And Story of Neglected Developers
By Russ Weakley.
"The Email Standards Project has heard from designers all over the 
world how frustrating it is that Gmail, the otherwise excellent webmail 
client, does such a disappointing job rendering HTML email. I had no 
idea how hard it was for developers until I saw this movie - which 
moved me with its raw emotion..."
http://www.maxdesign.com.au/2008/04/09/gmail-grimace/

+03: EVENTS.

Web Form Design Best Practices
June 14, 2008.
Sunnyvale, California, U.S.A.
http://involutionstudios.com/?p=113&cat=8

+04: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

The Fine Art of Wireframes
By T. Scott Stromberg.
"One of the greatest advantages of sketching is that it can become a 
foundational tool which can easily be used to more fully explore your 
design treatments and architectural studies. The ability to hand-craft 
wireframes might take some practice, but the benefits gained from their 
use in client presentations can be priceless. High-fidelity, 
computer-generated deliverables can be a perfectly adequate way to 
present your ideas, but there is something liberating about being able 
to break out a pen and paper and clearly record creative ideas without 
the use of a computer. Likewise, there is also a special credibility 
gained with clients when your deliverables are handcrafted and 
unique-especially when they excite and empower your audience to 
participate in the creative process."
http://geniantsandbox.com/2008/02/28/the-fine-art-of-wireframes

+05: JAVASCRIPT.

A Short History of the Development of JavaScript
By Brendan Eich.
"It seems (according to one guru, but coming from this source, it's a 
left-handed compliment) that JavaScript is finally popular..."
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roadmap/archives/2008/04/popularity.html

Advanced JavaScript Debugging Techniques
By Mike Wilcox.
"The purpose of this article is to provide a list of advanced debugging 
techniques that are not easily found elsewhere on the web. Using Google 
to search for JavaScript debugging just gives you hundreds of articles 
about using alerts and how Firebug works. We all worship at the altar 
of Firebug, but there are things that can go beyond a console.log(). 
The following is a list of methods that every developer should have in 
their toolbox..."
http://tinyurl.com/35hsvb

Take Control of Your Maps
By Paul Smith.
"It is now possible to replicate Google Maps' functionality with open 
source software and produce high-quality mapping applications tailored 
to your design goals. Paul Smith shows how."
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/takecontrolofyourmaps

+06: MISCELLANEOUS.

The Principles of Project Management
By Meri Williams.
"...we'll talk about the work that comes before the project life cycle 
-- finding possible projects, working out which projects are worth 
pursuing, and getting to know the different groups of people who will 
be involved in any project. Finally, we'll discuss the process of 
actually initiating a project..."
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/principles-project-management

Interviews at the CHI 2008 Conference
"Luca Chittaro, a professor at the University of Udine, covers the CHI 
2008 conference in Florence for Nova, the innovation supplement of Il 
Sole 24 Ore, Italy's business newspaper. He is already at the 
pre-conference workshops where he is publishing interviews faster than 
we can read them..."
http://www.experientia.com/blog/interviews-at-the-chi-2008-conference/

+07: NAVIGATION.

Screen Readers and Source Ordering
By Eric Tribou.
"...Anyways, the point here is that source-ordered layouts might not be 
the most accessible thing in the world..."
http://weblog.bridgew.edu/ruthsarian/archives/000497.htm

Source Order WebAIM Thread
By  Mike Bleasdale.
"am paralyzed from the neck down and use a head wand for my computer. i
am studying web devel. i had thought that main content should be place 
before nav in source order. since i tab through a site, i must tab 
through the webaims nav menu to reach the main content. the webaim 
site, and also the wai site, have its source ordered like this, may i 
ask why..."
http://www.webaim.org/discussion/mail_thread.php?thread=3523

Linked Data Principles Revisited
By Michael Hausenblas.
"The linked data principles formulated by Tim Berners-Lee read quite 
straight-forward: 1. Use URIs as names for things 2. Use HTTP URIs so 
that people can look up those names. 3. When someone looks up a URI, 
provide useful information..."
http://tinyurl.com/3ntquh

+08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

HTML5: the Foreign lands (mathematics and graphics)
By Anne Van Kesteren.
The last few weeks there has substantive discussion on the HTML WG 
mailing list (public-html) and the Math WG public discussion mailing 
list (www-math) regarding embedding non-HTML languages in the text/html 
serialization of HTML focusing mostly on MathML and SVG. (Sidenote: the 
amount of e-mails totaled over the yearly average of the www-math 
list.)..."
http://annevankesteren.nl/2008/04/html5-foreign

HTML5: Custom Data
By Anne Van Kesteren.
"Sometimes HTML is not enough and you need a mechanism to include some 
custom data into the document...."
http://annevankesteren.nl/2008/04/custom-data

Why Use Semantic HTML? - part 2
By Joe Dolson.
"This guide only deals with elements which have a specific, 
human-readable meaning. The semantics of elements such as link, which 
are not seen in normal browsing, have been left out, as have 
replacement elements like img or object. In some cases, I've also 
addressed specific attributes which are critical to providing semantic 
value to an element. This is not a guide which demonstrates the opinion 
of the W3C as represented in the HTML, XHTML, or HTML 5 specifications. 
This is a practical-use guide which indicates my reasoned opinion 
concerning the best use of each element..."
http://www.joedolson.com/articles/2008/04/why-use-semantic-html/

Design Coding
"The Poetic Prophet (AKA The SEO Rapper) is back with another marketing 
rap. This time he describes how web standards and proper design can 
affect the ranking and conversion of pages on your site."
http://tinyurl.com/3o6qzj

+09: TYPOGRAPHY.

Smoothing Out the Creases in Web Fonts
By Jon Tan.
"Designers often choose one of the core Web fonts for body text because 
they are widely available, but like all typefaces, they render 
differently on different operating systems..."
http://tinyurl.com/3oubxs

On Choosing Type
By John Boardley.
"Typography is not a science. Typography is an art..."
http://ilovetypography.com/2008/04/04/on-choosing-type/

+10: USABILITY.

Usability or User Experience? What's the Difference?
By Tom Stewart.
"The term 'user experience' is now widely used, with its exponents 
claiming that it goes beyond mere usability by including such 
attributes as usefulness, desirability, credibility and accessibility. 
By contrast, 'usability' is often depicted as a narrower concept 
focusing on systems being easy to use..."
http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article4636.asp

+11: XML.

XML and Government Schizophrenia
By Michael C. Daconta.
"The U.S. Government has a love/hate relationship with XML..."
http://tinyurl.com/3jugvt

[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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+ TEXT EMAIL NEWSLETTER (TEN).

As a navigation aid for screen readers we do our best to conform to the 
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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.]