[webdev] Web Design Update: August 1, 2008

Thu Jul 31 06:26:13 CDT 2008

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 7, Issue 05, August 1, 2008.

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

++ISSUE 05 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: MISCELLANEOUS.
05: NAVIGATION.
06: PHP.
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.

Personalized Access - the next step beyond WAI-ARIA
By Rich Schwerdtfeger.
"WAI-ARIA brings Web accessibility on par, or better, than what is 
available for today's desktops. It provide the Web developer with the 
tools to deliver fully keyboard accessibility as well as full 
interoperability between web applications and an assistive technology 
either through the DOM. If the browser manufacturer chooses, it can 
make the interaction with the assistive technology even easier by 
mapping the new found WAI-ARIA meta data in the DOM to the 
accessibility API supported by the browser. While this will carry us 
very far with Web accessibility it does not take us all the way..."
http://tinyurl.com/5w76uq

Web Accessibility is Not SEO
By Joe Dolson.
"There are numerous articles pointing out the business advantages of 
accessibility. Many of these reflect the similarity between 
accessibility and SEO. However, despite the close technical 
relationship between the needs of disabled users and the technical 
requirements of search engine optimization, the fact remains that the 
two goals are not the same, are not equivalent, and do not reflect the 
same ultimate goals..."
http://www.joedolson.com/articles/2008/07/web-accessibility-is-not-seo/

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

HTML and CSS List Based Menus
By Schalk Neethling.
"HTML and CSS based menus is nothing new. I believe web developers has 
understood the semantic meaning behind this and are using lists to 
create their web site menu structures. With that said, what does lists 
add in a semantic sense. If you think about a menu of a website, what 
does it boil down to..."
http://css.dzone.com/news/html-and-css-list-based-menus

+03: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Weekly User Testing: TiVo Did It, You Can, Too
By Jakob Nielsen.
"TiVo ran 12 user tests in 12 weeks while designing its new website. As 
TiVo's experience shows, frequent and regular testing keeps the design 
usability focused."
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/weekly-usability-tests.html

+04: MISCELLANEOUS.

Pioneers of the World Wide Web: The Glazz is Full
By Sam Hiser.
"...This is a Q&A with Daniel Glazman, programmer of the old Mozilla 
Composer HTML editor, who is leading the effort to rescue Nvu from 
end-of-life obscurity in the form of KompoZer..."
http://fussnotes.typepad.com/plexnex/2008/07/pioneers-of-the.html

+05: NAVIGATION.

Any-Element Linking Demo
By Eric A. Meyer.
"In support of the still-to-be-finished proposal for allowing most HTML 
5 elements to become hyperlinks, I've written a quick proof-of-concept 
demo for your perusal. Basically, it's a page with some JavaScript that 
captures the whole document tree, looks for any elements with an href 
attribute, and then sprinkles some events on those elements in order to 
make them act like hyperlinks. There's also some CSS that applies 
old-school link presentation to said elements (blue and underlined, 
baby!). I'm using href because it was the easiest thing to do..."
http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2008/07/23/any-element-linking-demo/

The Hyperlink as Organizing Principle
By Alexander Halavais.
"What does a hyperlink mean? The question itself is problematical. We 
might be satisfied with the simpler and related question of what a 
hyperlink is and what a hyperlink does. But in trying to understand 
what the larger social effects of hyperlink networks are, it is not 
enough to be able to define a hyperlink, we need to understand its 
nature, its use, and its social effects..."
http://tinyurl.com/6ocxd3

+06: PHP.

Mangling XML as Text with PHP DOM
By James Edwards.
"Recently I had to do some mass-conversion of HTML files to DITA XML - 
material..."
http://tinyurl.com/69kfow

+07: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

Curriculum Survey Results
By Rob Dickerson.
"Early in 2006, members of the Web Standards Project Education Task 
Force and the World Wide Web Consortium Quality Assurance Interest 
Group first met to discuss the need for a standards-based curriculum to 
aid Educational Professionals in higher education teach modern Web 
techniques. At that time, it was decided that more information was 
needed and could be gathered with a survey. Questions were formulated 
and much of the next year was spent taming an unruly survey engine..."
http://www.webstandards.org/2008/07/28/curriculum-survey-results/

Validated Ampersands in HTML Links
By Christopher Schmitt.
"When dealing with the W3C's HTML Validator, you know that the error 
messages try to be helpful. But when you are new to HTML and Web design 
in general, the messages can be hard to decode..."
http://tinyurl.com/6cedol

The Survey, 2008
By A List Apart.
"Calling all designers, developers, information architects, project 
managers, writers, editors, marketers, and everyone else who makes 
websites. It is time once again to pool our information so as to begin 
sketching a true picture of the way our profession is practiced 
worldwide..."
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/survey2008

HTML 5 and summary: the feast of shrimp?
By Roberto Scano.
Article is in Italian.
http://tinyurl.com/6j2yp5
Translation tool:
http://www.google.com/language_tools

+08: TOOLS.

LowBrowse
"While existing programs enable blind people to access the web 
effectively, LowBrowse is the first program to enable people with 
moderate or severe low vision to both view web pages as the original 
web author intended and read the text on those pages tailored to their 
own visual needs. The highly anticipated program, which runs in 
conjunction with the Mozilla Firefox browser, will be offered at no 
charge and is expected to be available to the public for download via 
the Firefox add-on site in late summer or early fall of 2008."
http://www.lighthouse.org/aboutus/press/press-releases/lowbrowse/

+09: USABILITY.

News You Can Use
By Gerry McGovern.
"In an age of attention deficit and impatience, news created on 
organizational websites and intranets needs to be brutally 
action-oriented and to-the-point It needs to help people do things. It 
needs to be practical and real. And it needs to be newsworthy-not 
simply put up because it's Tuesday and we need to publish something."
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2008/nt-2008-07-28-news.htm

[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.

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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.]