[webdev] Web Design Update: August 14, 2008

Thu Aug 14 06:15:14 CDT 2008

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 7, Issue 07, August 14, 2008.

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

++ISSUE 07 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: NAVIGATION.
07: PHP.
08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
09: TYPOGRAPHY.
10: USABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Deafness and the User Experience
By Lisa Herrod.
Because of limited awareness around Deafness and accessibility in the 
web community, it seems plausible to many of us that good captioning 
will fix it all. It won't. Before we can enhance the user experience 
for all deaf people, we must understand that the needs of deaf, hard of 
hearing, and big-D Deaf users are often very different."
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/deafnessandtheuserexperience

Beijing 2008 Part One: accessibility gives a top level
By Henny Swan.
"...I'd say that while the site falls short of the basic level of 
compliance in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0, with a 
little effort it could make some huge steps forward. With over a year 
to go, the Beijing 2008 website has plenty of time to start rectifying 
the accessibility issues listed here and anything else that may be 
lurking under the bonnet. It would be great, for example, to add an 
accessibility help section as well as visible 'skip' links. My 
suggested steps in the process of improving the accessibility of the 
Beijing 2008 Olympics website are..."
http://tinyurl.com/26k8f7

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Why Adding Variables to CSS is a Good Thing
By Emil Stenstrom.
"Via Simon Willison I find that Bert Bos, one of the creators of CSS, 
has written an article on why variables shouldn't be included in CSS3. 
I thought I'd try to explain why I think they should..."
http://friendlybit.com/css/why-adding-variables-to-css-is-a-good-thing/

Supporting IE with Conditional Comments
By Bruce Lawson.
"IE conditional comments aren't exactly a new phenomenon, but we felt 
that now was high time to publish Bruce's 2008 remix of his classic 
conditional comments article. Even now, with browser support having 
advanced greatly in terms of standards support, there is still a great 
need to support older versions of IE, and conditional comments help 
greatly in allowing you to achieve this without resorting to hacks."
http://tinyurl.com/6oe6d7

Setting Web type to a Baseline Grid
By Craig Grannell.
"Another article in Craig Grannell's fabulous series on design basics, 
in this article Craig gives us the lowdown on grid design basics - how 
to create a baseline grid in CSS, and how to position text on screen 
using it, with distances measured in both pixels and ems."
http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/setting-web-type-to-a-baseline-grid/

Enhance Your Input Fields with Simple CSS Tricks
By Janko Jovanovic.
"We're all trying to build an effective and good looking web forms. But 
there are always a new challenges. With just a few simple CSS tricks 
you can make a usual, boring web forms more effective and exciting."
http://tinyurl.com/5espld

Specifics on CSS Specificity
By: Chris Coyier.
"The best way to explain it is to start with an example of where 
specificity gets confusing and perhaps doesn't behave like you would 
expect. Then we'll take a closer look at how to calculate the actual 
specificity value to determine which selector takes precedence..."
http://css-tricks.com/specifics-on-css-specificity/

+03: EVENTS.

South by Southwest
March 13-17, 2009.
Austin, Texas, U.S.A.
http://www.sxsw.com/interactive
Panel Picker is open:
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/

+04: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

The Information Architecture Behind Good Web Forms
By Luke Wroblewski.
"...While others may see things differently, for me information 
architecture challenges require extensive thinking about the structure 
and flow of information, which include information flow into and out of 
software applications. So it's not hard to see how forms fit into the 
mix and why I honed in on the relationship of information architecture 
to these tips..."
http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Aug-08/AugSep08_Wroblewski.html

+05: JAVASCRIPT.

Primitive Data Types, Arrays, Loops, and Conditions: Part 2
By Stoyan Stefanov.
"Any value that you use is of a certain type. In JavaScript, there are 
the following primitive data types: Number, String, Boolean, Undefined 
and Null. Any value that doesn't belong to one of the five primitive 
types listed above is an object..."
http://www.webreference.com/programming/javascript/beginning-oojs2/

+06: NAVIGATION.

Accessible Drop-Down Menus
By Martin Kliehm.
'A few days ago a co-worker asked if DHTML drop-down menus pose a 
problem with accessibility. Since the Web Content Accessibility 
Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG) declared all JavaScript evil in 1999, assistive 
technologies (AT) have made significant progress. So we cannot condemn 
pull-down menus altogether, but there are various reasons to keep an 
eye on them buggers..."
http://learningtheworld.eu/2008/accessible-drop-down-menus/

The Site Map: An Information Architecture Cop-Out
By Jared Spool.
"Why do you think your site map needs a redesign?" I asked the web
manager of a mid-sized government agency..."
http://www.uie.com/articles/Sitemap

+07: PHP.

End of Life for PHP 4
By Chris Shiflett.
"Today is 8/8/8, which is interesting for a few reasons, one of which 
is that it marks the end of PHP 4. What does this mean? It means 
yesterday's release of 4.4.9 is the final release of PHP 4..."
http://shiflett.org/blog/2008/aug/end-of-life-for-php-4

+08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

This Week in HTML 5 - Episode 1
By Mark Pilgrim.
"Welcome to a new semi-regular column, 'This Week in HTML 5,' where 
I'll try to summarize the major activity in the ongoing standards 
process in the WHATWG and W3C HTML Working Group..."
http://blog.whatwg.org/this-week-in-html5-episode-1

+09: TYPOGRAPHY.

Wrangling Widgets
By Mel Pedley.
"Sooner or later, you're bound to come across an article, or blog 
entry, that talks about 'text size widgets'. What exactly are these 
widgets and are they of any real use?..."
http://accessites.org/site/2008/08/wrangling-widgets/

+10: USABILITY.

Putting Our Hot Heads Together
By Carolyn Wood.
"The web is a conversation, but not always a productive one. Web 
discussions too often degenerate into whines, jabs, sour grapes, and 
one-upmanship. How can we transform discussion forums and comment 
sections from shooting ranges into arenas of collaboration?..."
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/puttingourhotheadstogether

Button Placement on Forms and Popup Windows
By Meryl Evans.
"How many times did you complete a form only to push the 'Clear' button 
instead of 'Submit'? What about 'OK' vs. 'Cancel' on a popup window?..."
http://tinyurl.com/6z9pdv

[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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+ 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.]