[webdev] Web Design Update: May 15, 2009

Fri May 15 06:41:22 CDT 2009

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 7, Issue 46, May 15, 2009.

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

++ISSUE 46 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: DREAMWEAVER.
04: EVENTS.
05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.
06: JAVASCRIPT.
07: MISCELLANEOUS.
08: NAVIGATION.
09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
10: TYPOGRAPHY.
11: USABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

WCAG 2.0 - The Difference
By Rosemary Musachio.
"The Worldwide Web Consortium is in the process of updating its Web 
Accessibility Guidelines (WCAGs) from 1.0 to 2.0. Web developers should 
not panic due to the update. If they already have made their websites 
and web applications in accordance with WCAG 1.0, their products 
probably will conform to WCAG 2.0 also..."
http://www.508portal.com/?q=node/617

A Systems Approach to Accessibility Through Content Personalization
By Martyn Cooper.
"This post advocates a systems approach to accessibility and highlights 
recent relevant developments it the metadata standards world. It is 
adapted form a paper submitted to the Dublin Core Conference 2009..."
http://tinyurl.com/prkl2y

Accessibility in Interaction Design
By Open Learn.
"In this unit we will discuss what we mean by ‘disability’. We will 
analyze some common impairment and disability groups, considering 
people with visual impairments, hearing impairments, physical 
impairments..."
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=2057

Accessibility Versus Affordance - Unasking The Right Questions
By Bill Thompson.
"Accessibility has always been an issue for information and 
communications technologies, but for most of the 60 or so years we've 
had stored-program digital computers, it was a secondary 
consideration..."
http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=287

AccessWorld Survey Results on Social Networking
By American Foundation for the Blind.
"In the February issue of the AccessWorld Extra e-mail, we asked 
readers about their use of social networking sites and social 
bookmarking sites."
http://www.afb.org/afbpress/pub.asp?DocID=aw100306

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Override Inline Styles with CSS
By Chris Coyier.
"...Often we think of inline styles as a way to override styles we set 
up in the CSS. 99% of the time, this is the case, and it's very handy. 
But there are some circumstances where you need to do it the other way 
around..."
http://css-tricks.com/override-inline-styles-with-css/

The Cascade by Example
By Virginia DeBolt.
"The Cascade in Cascading Style Sheets can determine how a web page 
displays. The purpose of the Cascade is to resolve conflicts when more 
than one rule applies to an element on an HTML page. Factors such as 
specificity, inheritance, and the order of the rules within a style 
sheet can all affect the Cascade. The most basic concept around the 
Cascade is the location of the style rule..."
http://www.webteacher.ws/2009/05/14/the-cascade-by-example/

+03: DREAMWEAVER.

Webuquerque: Standards and Accessibility With Dreamweaver
By Virginia DeBolt and Emily Lewis.
Presentation materials.
http://tinyurl.com/oqwhdx

+04: EVENTS.

Indiana University Accessibility and Usability Working Group Conference
June 15-16, 2009.
Bloomington, Indiana, U.S.A.
http://www.indiana.edu/~uits/cic_usability/index.html

Accessing the Future Conference
July 20-21, 2009.
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
http://ewh.ieee.org/conf/accessingthefuture/

Front-End
July 31, 2009.
Saint Petersburg, Florida, U.S.A.
http://www.frontenddesignconference.com/

Freedom Scientific Webinars
http://www.freedomscientific.com/Training/e-LearningEntrance.asp

+05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

Top-10 Information Architecture Mistakes
By Jakob Nielsen.
"Structure and navigation must support each other and integrate with 
search and across sub-sites. Complexity, inconsistency, hidden options, 
and clumsy UI mechanics prevent users from finding what they need."
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/ia-mistakes.html

The Value of Paper Prototyping
By Christian Watson.
"When I was working on the wireframe stage of the NCsoft West web site 
redesign I began by sketching the main templates out on paper..."
http://www.smileycat.com/miaow/archives/001561.php

+06: JAVASCRIPT.

Creating Accessible Popup Help with Dojo and ARIA
By Becky Gibson.
"I thought I would create and ARIA example of Popup Help - turns out 
that is easier said than done..."
http://tinyurl.com/dxdudq

+07: MISCELLANEOUS.

Gez Lemon Interview and ARIA
By Dennis Lembree.
"Gez Lemon is a world leader in the web accessibility profession and 
its community. He as an Accessibility Consultant for The Paciello 
Group, a company devoted to accessibility in technology. He maintains a 
popular blog Juicy Studio in which he's written many excellent articles 
and innovative scripts. Gez is a member of the Web Standards Project 
(WaSP) Accessibility Task Force (ATF). He's become an expert in WAI 
ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications). You may also follow Gez 
on Twitter (or Accessible Twitter) @GezLemon."
http://tinyurl.com/qw5xyw

+08: NAVIGATION.

Making $10,000 a Pixel: Optimizing Thumbnail Images in Search Results
By Greg Nudelman.
"...While your Web site’s image requirements are likely unique, there 
are some common pitfalls you might encounter in using images in your 
search results. The good news is that you can easily avoid most of 
these mistakes with awareness and a little foresight..."
http://tinyurl.com/oeymns

+09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

Holding on Effort for HTML5
By Shelley Powers.
"I have discontinued my efforts to re-examine Ian Hickson's semantic 
microdata use cases, as Ian has just published another use case, and 
added a microdata section to the HTML5 specification. (update see at 
end of writing)..."
http://tinyurl.com/plgjo7

Use Cases and Comparison of RDFa/HTML5 Microdata
By Shelley Powers.
"...I'm open for suggestions as to the use cases to single out for 
testing. And I promise to be fair in my effort. After all, I'm a member 
of the W3C HTML WG now-I have a responsibility to be both objective and 
fair, in the interest of producing the best specification."
http://tinyurl.com/orovkz

RDFa in Drupal Core
By Shelley Powers.
"While I'm in the process of looking more closely at the Microdata 
proposal, I wanted to note that today marked the end of the first day 
of the code sprint for incorporating RDFa into the core of Drupal 7..."
http://tinyurl.com/onv2o8

What You Can't Do with HTML5 Microdata
By Jeni Tennison.
"The HTML5 microdata proposal has hit the web, just days before Google 
announced its support for RDFa (or at least one vocabulary encoded 
using RDFa attributes). These are, indeed, “interesting times” for the 
semantic web..."
http://www.jenitennison.com/blog/node/103

Microdata
By Sam Ruby.
"It is a name I don't care for, but alas, one that likely will stick. 
The concept is to provide explicit support in HTML for embedding 
metadata in content.  Both Microformats and RDFa do related things..."
http://intertwingly.net/blog/2009/05/12/Microdata

Interview with Ian Hickson, Editor of the HTML 5 Specification
By Bruce Lawson.
"Accessibility Task Force member, Bruce Lawson, interviews Hixie on how 
the specification for the next generation of the Web’s markup language 
is shaping up..."
http://tinyurl.com/q4fwq9

W3C is Micro-Blogging
By W3C.
"This is a quick note to announce that we're joining the u-blogging 
community.."
http://www.w3.org/QA/2009/05/w3c_is_micro-blogging.html

+10: TYPOGRAPHY.

The Future of Web Font Embedding
By Richard Rutter.
"Firstly, let me define web font embedding, or so-called web fonts, as 
I see it. I mean using @font-face to point to regular TrueType or 
OpenType font files on a web server. In terms of support, the current 
state of affairs is such that Safari 3.1 supports web fonts, it is 
scheduled for Firefox 3.1 and it is currently available in a 
development release of Opera..."
http://stepchildren.clagnut.com/blog/2166/

Web Fonts
By Tal Leming.
"There has been a lot of recent discussion about the possibility of web 
pages containing embedded fonts. The professional type design world has 
been relatively silent on this issue. That's probably because there are 
significantly fewer of us than there are web designers. As a type 
designer who understands type technology, I thought I'd break the 
silence and offer my own thoughts on this issue..."
http://talleming.com/2009/04/21/web-fonts/

Font Embedding Now
By Dave Shea.
"Currently one of the biggest stumbling blocks to embedded type on the 
web is of a legal nature rather than any genuine technological barrier. 
Most of the major browsers have now implemented the @font-face 
property, and between sIFR and Cufon there are also alternatives for 
providing non-standard typefaces to browsers that haven't caught up 
yet..."
http://mezzoblue.com/archives/2009/05/07/font_embeddi/

Improve Your Web Typography With Baseline Shift
By Andy Clarke.
"The baseline is an invisible line onto which all type characters sit, 
although of course some characters (including 'j', 'p', 'g' and 'y') 
have descenders that hang below the baseline. Baseline shift involves 
moving characters up or down in relation to the baseline and using it 
effectively can make a huge difference to the professional look of your 
type. Although baseline shift has traditionally been a part of using 
tools like InDesign or Quark, there are ways to accomplish the same 
results using today's CSS..."
http://tinyurl.com/ra9lch

+11: USABILITY.

The Line Length Misconception
By M. Jackson Wilkinson.
"So should you really be limiting your line length to 75 characters? 
This research suggests you shouldn't. Users will be perfectly fine 
reading longer columns of text. What is the new standard? Tough to say, 
but 100cpl seems to be within the range of feasibility. There may be a 
good opportunity for some new and more thorough research in this area 
that could offer some valuable new insight."
http://www.viget.com/advance/the-line-length-misconception/

Jakob Nielsen Critiques Twitter
By Rebecca Reisner.
"Not everyone is hearts and flowers over Twitter. Web usability 
consultant Jakob Nielsen discusses the hazards and limitations of 
tweeting..."
http://tinyurl.com/oo5tnn

Approaching Design: Advice on How to Really Rock in UI/UX Design
By Jason Furnell.
"The longer I do this job, the more I think that there are certain 
qualities, or attitudes that can make a real difference to ones ability 
to get better designs implemented, and generally enjoy the job more. 
Here's my hopefully controversial list of qualities that will help you 
really rock."
http://tinyurl.com/dflypk

The Cheapskate’s Guide to Usability
By Dr. Peter J. Meyers.
"A big part of my day-job is trying to evangelize website usability to 
small businesses and friends in other industries (SEO, design, etc.). 
One of the biggest obstacles I come up against is the idea that decent 
usability testing is expensive. Sure, full-scale laboratory testing can 
be expensive and isn't accessible to everyone, but there’s a lot that 
you can do on a budget, and I'm a big believer that something is almost 
always better than nothing..."
http://tinyurl.com/d8maj7

[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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+ 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.]