[webdev] Web Design Update: July 17, 2007

Thu Jul 17 06:05:27 CDT 2008

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 7, Issue 03, July 17, 2008.

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

++ISSUE 03 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: COLOR.
04: EVENTS.
05: MISCELLANEOUS.
06: NAVIGATION.
07: PHP.
08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
09: USABILITY.
10: XML.

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

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Web Accessibility: WCAG 2.0 at a Glance
By W3C.
"WAI invites you to comment on a new draft resource...In order to make 
this available soon, we would like to receive comments by 15 July 2008 
at the publicly-archived mailing list:  wai-eo-editors at w3.org"
http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/glance/

British Standard for Accessibility
By Bruce Lawson.
"The British Standards Institution (BSI) has invited two members of the 
WaSP, Bruce Lawson and Patrick Lauke, to join the drafting committee 
for the first British Standard for Web Accessibility..."
http://tinyurl.com/64lwlu

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Adding Classes to Input Tags as a Matter of Course
By Alexander Kaiser.
"...I always assign a class to every input that is the same to the 
input's type..."
http://www.askthecssguy.com/2008/07/adding_classes_to_input_tags_a.html

HTML vs CSS, Part 4, div-wrapped
By Niels Matthijs.
This will be the final article in my little series on leaner css at the 
expense of slightly more convoluted html. The previous entries gathered 
fairly mixed reactions, which was pretty much the point of writing 
them. These methods of writing html and css are based on ideals and 
interpretation, it is only natural that each person will have their own 
views on them. As long as I got that across, the articles were a 
success. This last entry will focus on div-wrapping html elements with 
rigid structures. Buckle up.
http://www.onderhond.com/blog/work/html-vs-css-pt4-wrapper-div

+03: DREAMWEAVER.

Dreamweaver CS4 Review
By Stefan Mischook.
"The boys and girls at Adobe recently released a public beta of 
Dreamweaver CS4 - I can now freely talk about it now..."
http://www.killersites.com/blog/2008/dreamweaver-cs4-review/

+05: EVENTS.

Rich Web Experience
September 4-6, 2008 in Washington, D.C. U.S.A.
September 8-10, 2008 in San Jose, California. U.S.A.
http://www.therichwebexperience.com/events.jsp

ZendCon 2008
September 15-18, 2008.
Santa Clara, California, U.S.A.
http://www.zendcon.com/ZendCon08/public/content/home

Web Directions South
September 23-26, 2008.
Sydney, Australia.
http://south08.webdirections.org/

User Interface 13 Conference
October 13-16, 2008
Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
http://www.uie.com/events/uiconf/2008/

php|works (call for papers)
November 12-14, 2008
Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A.
http://phpworks.mtacon.com/c/p/phpworks,cfp

+08: MISCELLANEOUS.

Building the UX Dream Team - Part 2
By Anthony Colfelt.
"...Each UX dream team has a finely tuned mix of skills and qualities, 
as varied as the environments in which they operate. Part two will 
address whether a person has the right 'hard' skills and 'soft' 
qualities like communication style, creativity and leadership ability 
to fit your particular organizational context. We'll also touch on the 
quality of an individual's personality that may or may not complement 
the others on your team."
http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/building-the-ux55

Interview: Charles McCathieNevile on Opera 9.5 and W3C Standards
By Ian Jacobs.
"In June 2008, Opera Software released version 9.5 of its browser. As 
part of a series of interviews with W3C Members to learn more about 
their support for standards and participation in W3C, I asked Charles 
McCathieNevile (Opera's Advisory Committee Representative at W3C) some 
questions..."
http://www.w3.org/QA/2008/07/interview_charles_mccathienevi.html

Cindy Li Interview
By Christopher Schmitt.
"One of the first thing you get to know about Cindy Li is her tendency 
to get to the point of things. Be it her work, playtime, her 
relationships, she cuts to the quick while I'm just starting to get out 
of the basic framework of a situation..."
http://www.christopherschmitt.com/2008/07/15/the-cindy-li-interview/

Kevin Lawver Voices That Matter Interview at SXSW 2008
By Michael Nolan.
"Co-author of Adapting to Web Standards, Kevin Lawver, was interviewed 
by Michael Nolan from Peachpit at South By Southwest 2008 as part of a 
podcast series..."
http://tinyurl.com/57yq9z

+09: NAVIGATION.

Producing Great Search Results: Harder than It Looks - Part 1
By Jared M. Spool.
"When creating a search results page, it's unfortunately too easy to 
produce an ineffective design. We know this because, in the course of 
our research, we've studied hundreds of search results pages. Many of 
the pages we've studied hurt the user's experience purely because of 
their design."
http://www.uie.com/articles/search_results/

Expanding Results
By Peter Morville.
"There was a good thread on the IAI Members List recently about 
expanding results during faceted search. For those not on the list, 
here are a few highlights..."
http://www.findability.org/archives/000214.php

+10: PHP.

Migrating Legacy PHP 4 Applications to PHP 5
By Akash Mehta.
"PHP 5 supports most of the legacy syntax features of PHP 4. Most code 
written for PHP 4 should function fine under PHP 5, and a comprehensive 
test suite could check this. However, many of the 
backwards-incompatible changes in PHP 5 were in regard to language 
quirks, and quite a few hacks rely on these in order to function."
http://tinyurl.com/6a4q3y

Web Development in Mac OS X - Complete Guide
By Gyorgy Fekete.
" Finally, I switched entirely to Mac. It is a little frustrating that 
there is not a complete resource on how to set up a web development 
environment on Mac OS X. The majority of tutorials are outdated. I will 
try to write this guide as complete as possible."
http://blog.primalskill.com/?p=64

+11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

Then and Now in Standards: What's Different
By Shelly Powers.
"...Microsoft has forgotten that nothing stands alone on the web. The 
only way the company will remember this important lesson is for us to 
succeed in those areas where the company has tried to generate failure; 
for all of us to continue to celebrate standards, which form a stable 
platform for change, in addition to innovation, which ensures that 
standards remain a living work."
http://tinyurl.com/5ofkpp

+14: USABILITY.

Judging Forms
By Jessica Enders.
"There's an old saying that advises: 'don't judge a book by its cover'. 
The idea behind this saying is that initial, outward impressions are 
not necessarily a good indicator of what's on the inside..."
http://formulate.com.au/articles/judging-forms/

Calling in the Big Guns
By Will Evans.
"The scene is all too familiar. You're presenting wireframes of the 
registration process for a new web application when the discussion 
veers down a dark alley. The sky has turned the color of black ink, and 
you can smell sulfur in the air as one team member after another 
debates the alignment of form labels..."
http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/calling-in-the-big

Selfish, Mean, Impatient Customers
By Gerry McGovern.
"Information overload, news fatigue and WADD (Web Attention
Deficit Disorder) are creating a brutal landscape on the
Internet..."
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2008/nt-2008-07-14-selfish.htm

+15: XML.

Google Hates XML
By Ric Johnson.
"Google does not know how to use XML - in fact it seems the hate it."
http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2008/07/google_hates_xml.html

[Section one ends.]

++ SECTION TWO:

+16: 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.

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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.]