[webdev] Web Design Update: October 31, 2008

Fri Oct 31 06:17:10 CDT 2008

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 7, Issue 18, October 31, 2008.

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

++ISSUE 18 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: DREAMWEAVER.
05: EVENTS.
06: JAVASCRIPT.
07: MISCELLANEOUS.
08: NAVIGATION.
09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
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 Guidelines 2.0: Better Than a Poke in the Eye With a 
Stick?
By Bill Weye.
"The World Wide Web Consortium is planning to implement a new version 
of the Web accessibility guidelines this year, and it seems like many 
people have had negative things to say about the version 2.0 update 
(not official yet). These guidelines affect the way designers and 
developers build sites for the disabled, so it's more important than 
ever as the Web becomes the de facto repository for information, 
commerce and entertainment..."
http://tinyurl.com/6r8vqj

W3C: Global Standards Giant Gears Up For Battle
By Dan Jellinek.
"With the long-awaited appearance of version 2 of the World Wide Web 
Consortium's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) now expected 
in December, the spotlight is set to fall once more on the workings of 
this key international standards body..."
http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=208

Accessibility in Web Design Provides a High Degree of Usability
By Atil.
"Accessibility in web design provides a high degree of usability for 
people with disabilities. Mostly based on general design principles, 
with some specific extra facilities, accessible design ensures that you 
do not deliver a restricted or exclusionary message and therefore 
image. Full accessibility design guidelines are provided by the W3C, 
the standards body for the Web (http://www.w3.org/WAI). While the focus 
of this section is largely on design for blind users who access the web 
page via a screen-reader, if you make pages accessible in the ways 
suggested you will improve clarity for all users. The BBC has developed 
a script called Betsie, which will convert pages to plain HTML."
http://tinyurl.com/5htsa4

Test Case: Speaking Special Characters
By Bob Easton.
"A visitor, Ben Boyle, recently wrote that he was surprised when OSX 
Voiceover announced a series of three periods as 'elipsis.' It is a 
surprisingly accurate interpretation of a simple character string..."
http://tinyurl.com/5tdsa8

Creating an Accessible Online Tutorial Using Adobe Connect
By Julie Shen.
"This AIM resource is an exemplar tutorial on how to create accessible 
online tutorials. Utilizing Adobe Connect, this AIM offers a 'behind 
the scenes tour' on how to create online tutorials while adhering to 
common accessibility practices. Essentially, this high quality resource 
both guides and models the user on how create an accessible online 
tutorial by discussing the proper use of story boards, video/audio 
features, screen casts, and handouts given different learning 
preferences."
http://connect.csupomona.edu/accessiblehowto

Have You Got the X Factor? Building websites for mobile and disabled 
users
By Henny Swan.
"Last weekend saw the first ever online conference for web 
professionals <head>. Spread over three days roughly 80 speakers from 
different time zones hung out with delegates in virtual rooms speaking 
on just about any topic you can think of that is web related..."
http://tinyurl.com/6e2kwj

Image Use Cases That WCAG Doesn't Address
WCAG 2.0 Comment 2615.
"...As for the other one you cite above, we think that WCAG currently 
draws the line in the right place and changing the standard would 
create problems for accessibility."
http://trace.wisc.edu/bugzilla_wcag/issuereports/issue_ind.php?id=2615

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

A CSS Sticky Footer that Just Works
By Ryan Fait.
"We've all tried to use a sticky footer one time or another, but they 
never seem to come out right, do they? Well, the days of a hard to 
understand CSS-based sticky footer are thankfully over. In just a few 
simple CSS classes with minimal extra HTML markup, I've fashioned a 
sticky footer that even beginners can get a handle on. It's been tested 
in IE 5 and up, Firefox, Safari and Opera..."
http://ryanfait.com/sticky-footer/

+03: COLOR.

Is CSS3 RGBa Ready to Rock? (screen cast)
By Andy Clarke.
"...Run a Google search for RGBa and you'll find that it stands for 
Red, Green, Blue, Alpha; a colour space or model with a fourth channel, 
an alpha channel, which describes transparency. CSS3 adds this 
transparency information to other CSS color properties, enabling you to 
not only specify colours in RGB values but (most interestingly) the 
alpha-transparency value of that colour..."
http://forabeautifulweb.com/blog/about/is_css3_rgba_ready_to_rock/

+04: DREAMWEAVER.

Working with Images in Dreamweaver CS4
By Sheri German.
"In this tutorial I will show you how to use the Fireworks and 
Photoshop image editing integration tools in Dreamweaver using the 
Birdland website as an example. You can download the support files and 
follow along to create the design for the website."
http://tinyurl.com/5katdg

+05: EVENTS.

Web Design World Boston
December 8-10, 2008.
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
http://webdesignworld.com/2008/boston/default.aspx

California Web Accessibility Conference
January 12, 2009.
Long Beach, California, U.S.A.
http://www.knowbility.org/calwac/

+06: JAVASCRIPT.

JavaScript Namespacing - An Alternative to JavaScript Inheritance
By Robert Nyman.
"When talking about JavaScript and inheritance, something that often go 
amiss from the discussion is the alternative of using proper 
namespacing instead..."
http://tinyurl.com/6yxmr5

JavaScript and Screen Readers
By Aaron Cannon and Aaron Barker.
"In recent months, many web designers have been asking the question, 
'How can I make my dynamic site accessible?' Unfortunately, good 
answers have been slow in coming from the accessibility community. 
While some articles have touched on the problem, not many have gone 
into details. Here is our first attempt at rectifying this situation..."
http://northtemple.com/2008/10/07/javascript-and-screen-readers

+07: MISCELLANEOUS.

Interview with Aarron Walter
By Matthew Pennell.
"Aarron, thanks for taking the time to sit down for an interview with 
us, I know you're a busy man so let's get right into the questions. 
First, give us some insight into your background. How did you get 
started on the web?..."
http://www.digital-web.com/articles/Interview_Aarron_Walter/

Failure Is Not an Option -- It's a Requirement
By Jared M. Spool.
"...One thing is clear from our research: Failing is hard work. All 
teams need to get better at it through regular practice."
http://www.uie.com/articles/failure_not_an_option/

+08: NAVIGATION.

Should Arrows be Placed Before Link Text or After?
By Dmitry Fadeyev.
"Sometimes we'd like to use an arrow character or icon together with 
the link text to make it look nicer and attract users' attention. These 
are little arrows we see often by links such as 'Read more...' at the 
end of blog post summaries or 'Learn more' for products and services. 
The two variations look something like this..."
http://tinyurl.com/63vtl3

+09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

W3C Technical Plenary / Advisory Committee Meetings Week 2008
By Silvia Pfeiffer.
"I spent last week in France, near Cannes, at the W3C TPAC meeting. 
This is the one big meeting that the W3C has every year to bring 
together all (or most) of the technical working groups and other active 
groups at the W3C..."
http://tinyurl.com/6rh9r7

Audio ga-ga
By Jeremy Keith.
"Huffduffer is written in HTML5. For the most part, this is no 
different to writing in any other flavor of HTML, just with a simpler 
DOCTYPE. For the time being, I'm not using any of the new structural 
elements like section, article or footer. I am, however, making use of 
the audio element..."
http://adactio.com/journal/1524

+10: XML.

Extensibility and Markup, Again and Again
By Shelley Powers.
"Proving that the issues with extensibility will never go away until 
faced, and resolved..."
http://tinyurl.com/6evc9l

[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.

WEB DESIGN UPDATE is available by subscription. For information on how 
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http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/webdevlist
The Web Design Reference Site also has a RSS 2.0 feed for site updates.

+ TEXT EMAIL NEWSLETTER (TEN).

As a navigation aid for screen readers we do our best to conform to the 
accessible Text Email Newsletter (TEN) guidelines.  Please let me know 
if there is anything else we can do to make navigation easier. For TEN 
guideline information please visit:
http://www.headstar.com/ten

+ 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.]