[webdev] Web Design Update: May 22, 2009

Fri May 22 06:43:47 CDT 2009

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 7, Issue 47, May 22, 2009.

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

++ISSUE 47 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: EVENTS.
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.

Accessible Instructional Materials
By Skip Stahl Send and Brenda Loughery.
"The Course will equip participants with an awareness of: the barriers 
presented by 'traditional' print instructional materials; an 
understanding of the importance of flexible and accessible learning 
resources; pertinent Special Education and Civil Rights legislation; 
Copyright Law; national, state, and local systems of materials 
acquisition and classroom use.."
Login as "guest"; Use enrollment key "aimcast"
http://teachweb.cast.org/moodle/

Disadvantages or Testing with Screen Readers Alone
By Rosemary Musachio.
"A misconception exists that if an electronic and information 
technology (E&IT) product is deemed accessible by a web content 
developer who uses a screen reader as an analysis tool, the product 
must be completely accessible. This is not the case..."
http://www.508portal.com/?q=node/630

2009 Brings ADA Changes
By Greg Trapp.
"Greg Trapp is an attorney by training. He is the director of the New 
Mexico Commission for the Blind and a longtime member of the National 
Federation of the Blind. In the following brief article he explains in 
layman's language the impact of the recent important amendments to the 
Americans with Disabilities Act."
http://www.nfb.org/images/nfb/Publications/bm/bm09/bm0905/bm090511.htm

Web Accessibility Checklist
By University of Texas.
"How do I make my web site accessible?..."
http://www.utexas.edu/learn/accessibility/testing.html

On Combining title and alt on Images
By David Dorward.
"I can't imagine any circumstance where the alt text should be the same 
as the title text ? since the alt should be an alternative to the 
image, the title shouldn't be able to add any information to that which 
is already expressed by the image..."
http://tinyurl.com/ofk256

Opera MAMA - A Sneak Peek at Headings, Images and Summary
By Henny Swan.
"MAMA has been busy these last few weeks and we have some early results 
coming in. Based on feedback and requests here is a snapshot of what 
the web's made of and some quick and dirty  analysis. The results are 
based on 4225113 URL's tested from over 250 countries; more about the 
methodology can be found in Dev Opera. It's worth noting that the 
numbers do not all add up as URLs may fulfill a number of the 
criterion. As such the percentages are also there as a guide line..."
http://tinyurl.com/qzr9bd

Refreshable Braille and the Web
By Roger Hudson.
"Many people have not had the opportunity to see someone use a 
refreshable Braille device to access the web. I recently videoed Bruce 
Maguire describing how he uses the internet with a refreshable Braille 
display. He also demonstrates finding a book on the Amazon site. 
Transcript of the video is at the end of this document..."
http://tinyurl.com/qccsga

Importance of HTML Headings for Accessibility
By Raymond Selda.
"...One way to make your site more accessible is through the use of 
headings. Headings in HTML are created with the h1-h6 elements and they 
should be used as headings just like the ones you see in newspapers, 
books and other print documents..."
http://tinyurl.com/qoght8

Specializing in Accessibility
By Tom Jewett.
"I am maintaining this site as a repository for many of the documents 
that I created for the CSU Accessible Technology Initiative, including 
some that have been modified since that time and possibly some that I 
will be testing in the future..."
http://www.tomjewett.com/accessibility/

Obama's Web Transparency: Not For Everybody
By Joe Dolson.
"President Barack Obama's approach to information transparency is 
admirable. His connection to the public through the major media 
channels of the digital age: the White House web site, Facebook, 
Twitter, YouTube, and other social media methods is impressive. It's a 
great way for the public to keep up to date on the activities of their 
government..."
http://tinyurl.com/qx6nd4

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Don't Forget About :active
By Ross Johnson.
"...I really advocate the adoption of it as normal standards based 
markup. If it becomes a convention than users will expect some sort of 
notification that a link was clicked and even it happens to fast on the 
pages that load right away, they know to look for it."
http://stylizedweb.com/2009/05/11/dont-forget-about-active/

10 Useful CSS Properties Not Supported By Internet Explorer
By Impressive Webs.
"...In this post, I'll describe 10 properties that can be quite useful 
but have little or no support in Internet Explorer..."
http://tinyurl.com/orxrdl

The Cascade and Ordering External Stylesheet Links
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 way rules Cascade."
http://tinyurl.com/qp4ebx

CSS Properties and Values, with Browser Support
By Estelle Weyl.
"CSS Properties Index..."
http://tinyurl.com/pfeln6

Universal Internet Explorer 6 CSS
By Andy Clarke.
"How do you answer the Internet Explorer 6 question?..."
http://forabeautifulweb.com/blog/about/universal_internet_explorer_6_css

+03: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Are you Measuring the Right Things?
By Gerry McGovern.
"Having enormous quantities of people visit gargantuan numbers of pages 
on your website is the only metric that matters. (Santa Claus is a 
woman who lives in the Bahamas.)..."
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2009/nt-2009-05-18-page-views.htm

+04: EVENTS.

International PHP Conference 2009 Call for Papers
May 25-27, 2009.
Berlin, Germany
http://it-republik.de/php/phpconference/

Designed-in Accessibility Webinar
Online
May 28, 2009.
http://tinyurl.com/rd78v2

An Introduction to W3C's Mobile Web Best Practices
Online Course
June 1 - July 31, 2009.
http://www.w3.org/2009/04/MobiWeb102/

Standards.Next HTML5
June 27, 2009.
London, United Kingdom
http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/2620046/

+05: JAVASCRIPT.

New Javascript videos on Javascript Event Handlers
By Stefan Mischook.
"I recently put out a few new videos on Javascript event handlers..."
http://tinyurl.com/o6juur

+06: NAVIGATION.

Do Not Remove the Outline From Links and Form Controls
By Roger Johansson.
"An addition to my post "Don't forget keyboard navigation" is that you 
should never use the outline CSS property to remove the indicator that 
most browsers display when a focusable element receives keyboard focus.
http://tinyurl.com/qj85wm

Designing for Faceted Search
By Stephanie Lemieux, Earley and Associates.
"Faceted search, or guided navigation, has become the de facto standard 
for e-commerce and product-related websites, from big box stores to 
product review sites. But e-commerce sites aren't the only ones joining 
the facets club..."
http://www.uie.com/articles/faceted_search/

+07: PHP.

MySQL and PHP: How to Make it Work Without Killing Your Server
By Marc Plotz.
"There are currently over 25 Million websites powered by PHP. If you 
had the time (and patience, nevermind the means) to check all of them, 
you would most certainly find that most use PHP in conjunction with a 
MySQL Database. The reasons for this is simple: they work extremely 
well together, they are relatively simple to integrate and they are 
flexible..."
http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/marc_plotz05122009.php3

Introduction to JSON and PHP
By Frank Lakatos.
"So you've heard the fanfare over JSON, but still haven't had the 
opportunity to dive into using it. Well, as a matter of fact, you may 
have been using JSON all along and not known it. Compounded by the fact 
that since PHP 5.2 there is native support for JSON, learning how to 
send data between your client and your server just got a whole lot 
easier."
http://www.itnewb.com/v/Introduction-to-JSON-and-PHP

+08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

RDFa in HTML
By Sam Ruby.
"A number of efforts seem to have sprouted up in the past few days..."
http://intertwingly.net/blog/2009/05/14/RDFa-in-HTML

When Social Media Closes Door
By Shelley Powers.
"I have work to do, trying to pull a lot of pieces together into some 
semblance of a balanced and comprehensive document on HTML5, RDFa, 
Microdata, et al, but first, I need decompression time from an excess 
of social media this last week. I don't know how all of you can manage 
the various weblog/mailing list/IRC/Twitter et al lives. I personally 
feel as if my brain has been ripped out through my eyeballs by sadistic 
chipmunks..."
http://tinyurl.com/o9jk8o

The Week of Microdata
By Kyle Weems.
"It's been a really busy week for microdata. So busy that I haven't 
personally had a chance to read up on all the details of the various 
announcements. That won't stop me from trying to summarize it all for 
you, though..."
http://www.cssquirrel.com/2009/05/14/the-week-of-microdata/

In Search of Microformats
By Ben Ward.
"It's been a very busy week for users of microformats. We made our 
announcement of the important new value-class-pattern over the weekend. 
That's the culmination of a huge amount of brainstorming and community 
effort, and offers great improvements to using microformats accessibly 
and in international contexts..."
http://tinyurl.com/qdgxl4

Persuading Microsoft to Implement Canvas
By Al
"Everyone must be very aware at this point that the words 'Microsoft' 
and 'Canvas' are usually combined to form negative sentences. But this 
does not have to be the case. As it stands, there are two options to 
consider when trying to use Processing.js in Internet Explorer..."
http://processingjs.org/blog/?p=30

+09: TYPOGRAPHY.

Whatever Happened to font-stretch?
By Richard Rutter.
"The font-stretch property was introduced in CSS 2.0 over ten years 
ago, but was culled in the transition to CSS 2.1. It now languishes in 
the dormant CSS 3 Fonts module. The property instructed browsers to 
select a 'normal, condensed, or extended face from a font family'. Its 
removal from CSS 2.1 was due to a complete lack of implementation by 
browsers. Unfortunately this leaves us with a gaping hole regarding 
font support..."
http://www.clagnut.com/blog/2265/

+10: USABILITY.

The Userability Podcast
"Live at the Voices That Matter Conference 2009, authors Robert Hoekman 
Jr. and Jared Spool field audience questions and share their thoughts 
on the usability of iPhone applications, interaction design frameworks, 
specific design criteria for mobile apps, and why it is still too early 
for iPhones to be usable..."
http://tinyurl.com/r8t5gr

Using Input Fields Fit For Purpose
By Dmitry Fadeyev.
"...Making fields larger is usually a non issue since the space right 
of them is almost always blank, so developers should really spend that 
extra minute to set correct field sizes (or choose correct field types) 
that would be fit for their intended purpose."
http://tinyurl.com/onyxwo

The Cost of Bad Forms
By Jessica Enders.
"If you've ever dipped into the world of forms, you'll know that no 
matter what their background, people can spend hours debating 
incredibly fine points of forms design, such as whether to use colons 
after field labels, or how those field labels should be aligned..."
http://formulate.com.au/articles/cost-bad-forms/

Usability and UI Designs Should Go Hand-in-Hand
By Bhopu.
"When I asked my Dad to help me by doing some charitable donation 
towards my wallet as I had to buy the Nokia 8800(Gold), he mysteriously 
smiled and told me to check my wallet the next morning. To my utter 
surprise, I found a note that said 'Mobile phones are meant for 
talking. What to do with a flashy jazzy instrument. Please find Rs 500 
note behind'..."
http://tinyurl.com/pcrxtr

[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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+ 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.]