[webdev] Web Design Update: June 6, 2008

[Laura Carlson]

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 6, Issue 50, June 6, 2008.

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

++ISSUE 50 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: DREAMWEAVER.
03: EVALUATION & TESTING.
04: JAVASCRIPT.
05: MISCELLANEOUS.
06: NAVIGATION.
07: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
08: TOOLS.
09: USABILITY.


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

[Contents ends.]


++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Migrating from WCAG 1.0 to WCAG 2.0
By Roger Hudson.
"This document has been prepared to help HTML developers and others who 
are familiar with the Web Content Accessibility Version 1.0 (WCAG 1.0) 
to map their current knowledge and practices with the WCAG 2.0 W3C 
Candidate Recommendation of 30 April 2008..."
http://wipa.org.au/papers/wcag-migration.htm

Beyond CAPTCHA: No Bots Allowed!
By James Edwards.
"I'm sure you've seen them many times -- those wild squiggles that need 
to be deciphered and typed into a text box before you can buy concert 
tickets online or access a comment form..."
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/captcha-problems-alternatives

Accessibility for Older Users: Part 1 of 3 - Introduction
By Jack Pickard.
"On the 14th May 2008, the W3C produced a document called Web 
Accessibility for Older Users: A Literature Review. Well, what can I 
say to that..."
http://tinyurl.com/42382h

Accessibility for Older Users: Part 2 of 3 - Limitations and Prejudice
By Jack Pickard.
"Getting older can result in..."
http://tinyurl.com/3wkxev

Accessibility for Older Users: Part 3 of 3 - Guidelines and Involvement
By Jack Pickard.
"And then they look at previous guidelines designed for older people..."
http://tinyurl.com/3j9nlp


+02: DREAMWEAVER.

Dreamweaver CS4 Public Beta: Subversion Integration
By Tom Muck.
"Dreamweaver is 10 years old, and Dreamweaver 10 (CS4) has been 
released as a public beta. Among the many new features is the 
integration with the Subversion source control and version control 
system. This has been a much requested feature over the years. With 10 
releases in 10 years, it is hard to get major features into a 
program?the limited time spent on development and testing between 
releases leaves little room for transformations in functionality, but 
this is one good step towards turning Dreamweaver into a valid and 
productive coding environment..."
http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=9C6DA


+03: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Web Site Tune-up: 8 Quick Checkups
By Joe Dolson.
"Perfecting a web site is a long and involved process. There's no 
getting around the fact that if you want every aspect of your site to 
be right - accessibility, search optimization, and just all-around 
pizzazz, you've probably got some significant work to do..."
http://tinyurl.com/3q33p8

Look Composed. How Visuals Can Draw and Drive Attention.
By Kath Straub.
"...Eyetracking studies capture where people look, how they move 
(visually) through a page, and how long they linger on the various 
spots. (For websites studies, they can also capture mouse movement and 
clicks.) Results are often conveyed in "heatmaps" overlaid on the 
original image. Hotspots (the red ones) on the heatmap define where 
people looked most, lingered and looked most often..."
http://www.humanfactors.com/downloads/may08.asp#kath


+04: JAVASCRIPT.

WAI-ARIA, It's Easy - @media 2008
By Steve Faulkner.
Steve's presentations slides are now available.
http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/?p=72

ARIA Slider, Part 1
By Hans Hillen.
"...In this article, I will be providing an example for the slider 
role..."
http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/?p=68

Overview of ARIA Live Regions
Peter Thiessen.
"Currently the WAI-ARIA guidelines address the problem of dynamic Web 
content by embedding accessible roles and states into HTML documents. 
Using ARIA, Web authors can create custom widgets such as a slider or 
grid and make them accessible by marking them up with WAI-ARIA. The 
markup allows a mapping for behavior and settings that AT can interpret 
and speak to the user. I wrote a paper, Ajax Live Regions: Chat as a 
Case Example (pdf) for the W4A 2007 conference that covers Live Regions 
in more detail..."
http://blog.overscore.com/?p=10

ARIA in HTML5 - Video Discussion
By Steve Faulkner.
"ARIA in HTML5 part 1 & ARIA in HTML5 part 2 - videos of Anne van 
Kesteren discussing ARIA and issues surrounding its implementation with 
Marcos Caceres."
http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/?p=70


+05: MISCELLANEOUS.

Saving the Spark: Developing Creative Ideas
By Mark Boulton.
"Ideas are at the heart of every creative process. However, coming up 
with them can be hard work. Mark Boulton arms us with tools to meet 
this challenge."
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/savingthespark

Why We Skip Photoshop
By Jason Fried.
"When designing a UI we usually go right from a quick paper sketch to 
HTML/CSS. We skip the static Photoshop mockup. Here are a few reasons 
why we skip photoshop..."
http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1061-why-we-skip-photoshop


+06: NAVIGATION.

Don't Design 'What If' Navigation
By Gerry McGovern.
"Every time you add navigation options you add confusion and 
complexity. Too much choice is the bane of web navigation..."
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2008/nt-2008-06-02-navigation.htm


+07: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

The Missing Link
By Eric Meyer.
"One of the few things I think XHTML2 got absolutely, totally, 125% 
right was freeing the href attribute from the few elements that 
accepted it and spreading it all over the language. It saddens me that 
this isn't happening in HTML5, especially since at least 1.5 of the 
four reasons given seem off base..."
http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2008/06/02/the-missing-link/

Offline Web Applications
By Anne van Kesteren.
"HTML 5 contains several features that address the challenge of 
building Web applications that work while offline. This document 
highlights these features (SQL, offline application caching APIs as 
well as online/offline events, status, and the localStorage API) from 
HTML 5 and provides brief tutorials on how these features might be used 
to create Web applications that work offline. [HTML5]..."
http://www.w3.org/TR/offline-webapps/


+08: TOOLS.

IETester
"IETester is a free WebBrowser that allows you to have the rendering 
and javascript engines of IE8 beta 1, IE7 IE 6 and IE5.5 on Vista and 
XP, as well as the installed IE in the same process."
http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage


+09: USABILITY.

Expectations and Usability: Consistency
By Peter J. Meyers.
"Recently, I've talked about why expectations drive usability and how 
industry standards and habits create expectations. Once a visitor 
reaches your website, though, you also start to set your own 
expectations. You would think that the expectations you set yourself 
would be the easiest to meet, but sadly, that doesn't seem to be the 
case. Many of the most common website usability problems I come across 
boil down to violating internal consistency. Below are some common 
consistency problems and how to avoid them..."
http://www.usereffect.com/topic/expectations-and-usability-consistency

Web Form Design: Labels Within Inputs
By Luke Wroblewski.
"I've written extensively about the differences between top, right, and 
left aligned labels on Web forms. While these considerations account 
for the majority of form layout options, they don't cover all the 
possible ways form labels could be presented on a page. One alternative 
I get asked about quite regularly is labels within input fields..."
http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?687

Web Design: 10 Additional Research Findings You Should Know
By Jens Meiert.
"Following up on last year's post on web design research, here's a new 
collection of research results, this time featuring further reading as 
well..."
http://tinyurl.com/4d3yye


[Section one ends.]


++ SECTION TWO:

+10: 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.]