[webdev] Web Design Update: June 19, 2009

Fri Jun 19 06:10:31 CDT 2009

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 7, Issue 51, June 19, 2009.

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

++ISSUE 51 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: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.
06: MISCELLANEOUS.
07: NAVIGATION.
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.

Section 508: WCAG 1.0 or WCAG 2.0?
By Michael Gaigg.
"Answer In short: WCAG 1.0, at least for the next couple of years."
http://tinyurl.com/knj3va

AnySurfer
By AnySurfer.
"AnySurfer is a Belgian quality mark for accessible websites. Sites 
that carry the label, comply with a carefully crafted set of 
guidelines: the AnySurfer checklist. They are accessible to everyone ? 
including visitors with a disability."
http://www.anysurfer.be/en/

Common Look and Feel Standards for the Internet, Part 2: Standard on 
the Accessibility, Interoperability and Usability of Web Sites
By Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat.
"Canadians have the right to obtain information and services from 
Government of Canada Web sites regardless of the technologies they 
use..."
http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/clf2-nsi2/clfs-nnsi/clfs-nnsi-2-eng.asp

The Web Guidelines Quality Model (the Netherlands)
By webrichtlijnen.
"Government bodies and companies are facing the challenge of creating 
websites that are optimally accessible to people as well as browsers 
and search engines. The Web Guidelines aid in that process."
http://www.webrichtlijnen.nl/english/

Page Should Contain No More Than Two h1 Elements
By WebAIM Thread.
"can anyone explain this...The page should contain no more than two h1 
elements. Warning..."
http://webaim.org/discussion/mail_thread.php?thread=3905

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Centering Images with CSS
By Lorraine Nepomuceno.
"...today I want to talk about centering your images with CSS. If you 
remember the old way (without the magic of CSS), it was something like 
this..."
http://www.devlounge.net/code/centering-images-with-css

First Look: Object Oriented CSS
By Kevin Yank.
"... I'm researching some of the latest thinking on hand-coded CSS..."
http://tinyurl.com/lr25o3

A Detailed Look at the Z-Index CSS Property
By Impressive Webs.
"...Hopefully this article will clear up some misunderstandings 
regarding z-index..."
http://tinyurl.com/ldc5bc

Take Your Design To The Next Level With CSS3
By Nayaili de Leon.
"...In this article, we'll look at the advantages of CSS3 and some 
examples of how Web designers are already using it. By the end, we'll 
know a bit of what to expect from CSS3 and how we can use its new 
features in our projects..."
http://tinyurl.com/mrj6tb

+03: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Eyetracking Research and Forms Design
By Formulate Information Design.
"In recent years, a number of form design related eyetracking studies 
seem to have captured popular attention amongst the web community..."
http://formulate.com.au/articles/eyetracking-research-and-forms-design/

+04: EVENTS.

edUi 2009
September 21-22, 2009.
Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S.A.
http://www.eduiconf.org

Techshare
September 16?18, 2009.
London, United Kingdom
http://tinyurl.com/cwjke2

+05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

IA Summit 09 - Day 1
By Jeff Parks.
Podcasts of the Information Architecture Summit are now available. 
Among the selections are 'The Adoption of Web Standards into Web Design 
and Development: A Report on a Large Survey' by David Robbins, 'The 
Semantic Web: What IAs Need to Know About Web 3.0' by Chiara Fox, and 
'Designing Rules: The Engine of User Experience' by Dan Brown.
http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/ia-summit-09-day-1

Information is a Task
By Gerry McGovern.
"One of the greatest challenges organizations face is truly 
understanding the importance of, and managing the completion of, 
information-based tasks..."
http://tinyurl.com/mzjks7

Apple, IKEA and Their Integrated Architecture
By Davide Potente.
"The design of a physical space can and should take advantage of 
information architecture (IA) deliverables, in particular when 
designing an integrated model of IA across environments. The user must 
be able to easily consult technology-dependent environments such as 
digital media or printed paper catalogs in line with the information 
flow carried through the website. Conveying the relevance of 
information to the user/consumer by means of applying IA principles 
with a view to designing a crisscross-connecting model of 
human-information interaction is the focus of these studies."
http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Apr-09/AprMay09_Potente-Salvini.html

+06: MISCELLANEOUS.

Improving Your Process: Faster Front End Development
By Jonathan Christopher.
"n our business, time is of the essence. Regardless of your billing 
policies, as a professional designer it is imperative that you have the 
ability to accurately estimate a workload and then follow through, on 
schedule..."
http://tinyurl.com/mkkms2

The Battlefield of Design: Designers vs Clients
By Paul Boag.
"Establishing the look and feel of a site can be a point of contention. 
Web designers often become frustrated because they feel there's a lack 
of respect for their expertise. Meanwhile, clients grow annoyed when 
their designer seemingly fails to listen to them..."
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/design-designers-clients/

+07: NAVIGATION.

The Effectiveness of Web Search Engines to Index New Sites From 
Different Countries
By Ari Pirkola.
"The biased coverage of Google and Live Search raises concern because 
of their international nature. The coverage bias by the European search 
engines only seems to have local or regional significance."
http://informationr.net/ir/14-2/paper396.html

+08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

Open Web Education Alliance Incubator Group Charter
By W3C.
"The goal of this Incubator Group is to bring together interested 
individuals, companies, and organizations with a strong interest in the 
field of educating Web professionals, to explore the needs and issues 
around the topic of Web development education. This Incubator Group 
will detail the options for establishing a group dedicated to bringing 
Web standards and best practices to the process of educating future 
professionals in Web professions, no matter where this training and 
education might be provided."
http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/owea/charter-20090617

Alternate text in HTML 5
By Bruce Lawson.
"For a while now there has been a battle raging between accessibility 
advocates and those who are most closely involved in drafting the HTML 
5 specification."
http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2009/alternate-text-in-html-5/

Comic Update: HTML5 Stubbornness and Snogging
By Kyle Weem.
"...Blind people can't see. Blind web users, as a result, need some 
aids to make sense of things we'd take for granted, even when screen 
readers are taken into account. Pictures need some form of alternate 
text and tables need some sort of summary to help give them the scope 
of the data that's about to be read to them (as just two examples.) The 
WAI-CG has methods for solving these sorts of problems. These solutions 
exist in HTML4. However, the WHAT WG, with what I presume is a desire 
to keep code simple, want to do accessibility their own way. To prove 
their point, they lean on surveys of existing web content which show 
little adoption of the accessibility features being debated. They also 
decline to accept the advice of accessibility experts with real-life 
experience interacting with disabled users. For a bunch of smart 
people, that's pretty stupid..."
http://tinyurl.com/lzj4wk

Adobe on 'HTML5'
By John Dowdell.
"The current WhatWG proposals called 'HTML 5' have been stirring up a 
lot of polarizing speech lately... articles with Flash-killer headlines 
lead to street-level fracases. "
http://blogs.adobe.com/jd/2009/06/adobe_on_html5.html

The Fascinating World of i18n (Richard Ishida Interview)
By Lachlan Hunt.
During TPAC 08, Lachy got-a-chattin' with Richard Ishida - the W3C's 
Internationalization (i18n) activity lead. Richard gives an insight 
into all the complexities that the i18n activity is trying to deal 
with. Richard is a wonderful speaker with tremendously knowledgeable of 
all things 18n; he gives some great descriptions of i18n problems in 
this little interview. If you are new to i18n, I think you will find 
this video very insightful.
http://standardssuck.org/the-fascinating-world-of-i18n

Maintainability Guide (Beta)
By Jens Meiert.
"This documentation on maintenance and maintainability means a start. 
I've been focusing a lot on these topics over the last few weeks, maybe 
a bit longer, so it's been about time to share some beef, and to still, 
all of a sudden, double the documentation that's out there..."
http://meiert.com/en/blog/20090617/maintainability-guide/

+08: TYPOGRAPHY.

The Fallacy of Page Zooming
By Drew McLellan.
"...To understand by page zooming is a complete red herring you have to 
understand this: the property of being able to cope with resized text 
is more important than the size of the text...."
http://allinthehead.com/retro/343/the-fallacy-of-page-zooming

+10: USABILITY.

International Standards for Usability Should Be More Widely Used
By Nigel Bevan.
"Despite the authoritative nature of international standards for 
usability, many of them are not widely used. This paper explains both 
the benefits and some of the potential problems in using usability 
standards in areas including user interface design, usability 
assurance, software quality, and usability process improvement."
(Nigel Bevan - Journal of Usability Studies May 2009)
http://www.upassoc.org/upa_publications/jus/2009may/bevan1.html

Web Form Layouts: Some Additional Guidelines
By Luke Wroblewski.
"Two sets of recently published Web form design guidelines..."
http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?832

[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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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.]