[webdev] Web Design Update: November 26, 2008

[Laura Carlson]

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 7, Issue 22, November 26, 2008.

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

++ISSUE 22 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: BOOKS.
03: DREAMWEAVER.
04: EVALUATION & TESTING.
05: EVENTS.
06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.
07: MISCELLANEOUS.
08: PHP.
09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
10: USABILITY.
11: XML.

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

[Contents ends.]


++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

SJSU Becomes First School in CSU to Use iTunes U
By Chris Curry.
San Jose State University provides transcripts of ALL its iTunes 
content. Many of the files have transcripts embedded.
http://tinyurl.com/62ela6

iTunes and iTunesU Adds VoiceOver
By Cory Bohon.
"Apple just released an update to iTunes. Version 8.0.2 "...improves 
stability and performance and provides a number of important bug 
fixes." They note that this update adds VoiceOver capabilities for both 
iTunes and iTunes U. VoiceOver is the built-in screen reader utility 
for Mac OS X that helps visually challenged users..."
http://tinyurl.com/64gdt7

National Federation of the Blind and Commonwealth of Massachusetts 
Announce Agreement with Apple to Make iTunes Fully Accessible
By Chris Danielsen.
"Apple will make iTunes U (a dedicated area of the iTunes Store for 
content provided by colleges and universities) fully accessible by 
December 31, 2008, and will ensure the full accessibility of the iTunes 
software and the rest of the iTunes Store to blind people using both 
Mac and Windows operating systems by June 30, 2009."
http://www.nfb.org/nfb/NewsBot.asp?MODE=VIEW&ID=366

iTunes U Accessibility Working Group
By Athen (Access Technologists in Higher Education Network).
http://tinyurl.com/5jb5jw
Includes an iTunes U Accessibility Evaluation (powerpoint presentation)
By Joe Humbert.
http://www.colorado.edu/Atconference/AHG_2008_iTunes_Presetation.ppt

Do You Use Access Keys?
By Robert Nyman.
"I felt it was about time to bring up the topic in one of my oldest 
drafts (written in May 2005) which, for some reason, never saw the 
light of day."
http://www.robertnyman.com/2008/11/25/poll-do-you-use-access-keys/

Accessible Interface Design, Part 1
By Mark McKay.
"A lot of what I will cover in this article is just plain good design 
with a few tweaks to make it more accessible..."
http://tinyurl.com/5og446

Accessible Interface Design, Part 2
By Mark McKay.
"...It is true that well designed, properly coded, visually appealing 
applications can be even more accessible when they use proper 
structure, plain language, headings and label interface controls in a 
meaningful way. I challenge everyone reading this article to make your 
next application beautiful, usable and accessible."
http://tinyurl.com/6zkhge

Section 508: Uncle Sam's Guide To Web Accessibility
By Rob Ballou.
"If you've ever worked on a US federal government web site, you've 
probably encountered Section 508 law for web accessibility. In this 
article, Rob wades through the jargon to deliver the tips you need to 
ensure the sites you build are compliant."
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/section-508-web-accessibility/


+02: BOOKS.

Harper and Yesilada. Web Accessibility: A Foundation for Research, 
Springer, 2008.
Online at: http://www.springerlink.com/content/978-1-84800-049-0

Jarrett  and Gaffney. Forms That Work: Designing Web Forms For 
Usability, Morgan Kaufmann, 2008.

Seale, Jane. E-learning and Disability in Higher Education, Routledge, 
2006.


+03: DREAMWEAVER.

Dreamweaver CS3 and CS4 Video Tutorials
By Stefan Mischook.
"I just released a new set of Dreamweaver video tutorials that cover 
Dreamweaver CS3 and CS4..."
http://tinyurl.com/6osq34


+04: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Why We Call Them Participants
By Dana Chisnell.
"It was not an easy recruit. Directors of IT are busy people. Oddly, 
they're hard to get hold of. They don't answer calls from strangers. 
They don't answer ads on web sites. The ones who do answer ads on web 
sites we had to double-check on by calling their company HR departments 
to verify they had the titles they said they did..."
http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/why-we-call-them

Genetic A/B Testing with JavaScript
By John Resig.
I've long been interested in the concept of A/B testing (Also called 
split testing). It's a simple concept that should sit will with most 
mathematically-inclined types: You have a baseline interface in which 
you adjust a single variable, at random, for each user that visits your 
application. After a given amount of time you should be able to see if 
certain variables affect how your users behave (either negatively or 
positively).
http://ejohn.org/blog/genetic-ab-testing-with-javascript/


+05: EVENTS.

Designing For All
December 3, 2008.
London, United Kingdom.
http://www.headstar-training.com/dfa/

Affordable Web Training
Online five week course beginning December 3, 2008.
http://www.molly.com/2008/11/25/finally-affordable-web-training/


+06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

Wireframeworks Manifesto
By Hammad Khan.
"Over the last ten years, the Internet has gone from being the product 
of technology to the media channel of choice for much of the general 
public. Designers and developers have forged together innovative, 
entertaining and essential landmarks that can be accessed by computer, 
mobile and TV. As the importance of access, effectiveness and 
ergonomics of the web has become self evident, the role of the user 
experience professional has become the missing link between technology 
and people. We aim to make the web more usable, accessible, findable 
and practical."
http://wireframeworks.org/manifesto.aspx

The Real Information Architect
By Peter Morville.
"This entertaining presentation by Gail Leija is one of the best (and 
most fun) overviews of information architecture that I've seen in a 
while..."
http://www.findability.org/archives/000225.php


+07: MISCELLANEOUS.

Women in Tech: Jill Whalen
By Virginia DeBolt.
"Jill Whalen is a leading expert in the field of search engine 
optimization (SEO) and the head of High Rankings. Meet Jill Whalen..."
http://www.webteacher.ws/2008/11/25/women-in-tech-jill-whalen/

Designers and Developers, Why Can't We All Just Get Along?
By Simon Mackie.
"At The Future of Web Design in New York, the final session of the day 
was a panel discussion on the frictions and misunderstandings that 
often arise between designers and developers working together..."
http://tinyurl.com/5ryhds


+08: PHP.

Real-World OOP With PHP and MySQL
By  Angelo Rodrigues.
"Numerous examples from robots to bicycles have been offered as 'easy' 
explanations of what OOP is. I've opted to show you how OOP works with 
a real-life example, for a programmer. By creating a MySQL CRUD class 
you can easily create, read, update and delete entries in any of your 
projects, regardless of how the database is designed."
http://nettuts.com/tutorials/php/real-world-oop-with-php-and-mysql/


+09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

W3C Validator, Now with HTML5 Flavour
By Olivier Thereaux.
"A lot of recurring discussions among the W3C staff and contributors, 
whenever the question of 'what should be the focus of our validation 
tools' arises, seem to split the world in two camps..."
http://www.w3.org/QA/2008/11/w3c_validator_now_with_html5.html

W3C Markup Validation Service adds experimental HTML5 support
By Meitar Moscovitz.
"A few days ago, the W3C added experimental support for HTML5 to their 
online markup validation service. There's been an HTML5 validator 
available at Validator.nu for a while now, but the addition of HTML5 
validation to the W3C's own site is an important catalyst that is 
arguably overdue..."
http://tinyurl.com/64mhll

Web Standards in China
By Henny Swan.
"In early October I was lucky enough to spend some time in China 
talking to web professionals and students alike about web standards and 
their current status..."
http://www.webstandards.org/2008/11/24/web-standards-in-china/

This Week in HTML 5 - Episode 14
By Mark Pilgrim.
"...The big news this week is a radical proposal for integrating HTTP 
authentication with HTML forms..."
http://blog.whatwg.org/this-week-in-html-5-episode-14


+10: USABILITY.

Web Content Migration: Disastrous Strategy
By Gerry McGovern.
"There is probably no worse strategy for an intranet or public website 
than content migration. It is doomed to failure from the very start."
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2008/nt-2008-11-24-content-migration.htm


+11: XML.

What If There Already was Broad Support for XHTML?
By Adrian Bateman.
"...Of course, XHTML isn't just about well-formedness. The documents 
are truly XML and have the ability to embed mark-up from other 
namespaces such as SVG and MathML and to be processed with standard XML 
tools. There is also work underway in the HTML 5 WG to define the 
mechanisms for these languages to be embedded in HTML. What value is 
there in XHTML if it only differs from HTML in which type of parser I 
instantiate to read a document?"
http://tinyurl.com/6sa7qe


[Section one ends.]


++ SECTION TWO:

+12: 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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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 
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if there is anything else we can do to make navigation easier. For TEN 
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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.]