[webdev] Web Design Update: July 1, 2009

Wed Jul 1 03:52:44 CDT 2009

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 8, Issue 01, July 1, 2009.

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

++ISSUE 01 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: JAVASCRIPT.
07: MISCELLANEOUS.
08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
09: USABILITY.
10: XML.

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

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Developing a Web Accessibility Business Case for Your Organization
By Web Accessibility Initiative.
This document has been updated. "It covers the social, technical, 
financial, and legal and policy factors in the business case for Web 
accessibility. Each section presents different aspects of Web 
accessibility along with guidance on developing a customized business 
case."
http://www.w3.org/WAI/bcase/Overview.html
Recent updates details:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/2009AprJun/0146.html

ITU-T Accessibility Resource
By International Telecommunication Union.
"A new portal bringing together many standardization resources on 
accessibility has been launched."
http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/accessibility/index.html

UN Convention on the Rights of Disabled People - Article 9: 
Accessibility
"To enable persons with disabilities to live independently and 
participate fully in all aspects of life, States Parties shall take 
appropriate measures to ensure to persons with disabilities access, on 
an equal basis with others, to the physical environment, to 
transportation, to information and communications, including 
information and communications technologies and systems, and to other 
facilities and services open or provided to the public, both in urban 
and in rural areas. These measures, which shall include the 
identification and elimination of obstacles and barriers to 
accessibility, shall apply to, inter alia..."
http://www.un.org/disabilities/default.asp?id=269

Table of Shared Web Experiences: Barriers Common to Mobile Device Users 
and People with Disabilities
By Web Accessibility Initiative.
This page contains information from the 'Shared Web Experiences' 
document in an alternative table format. Please see the main page, 
Shared Web Experiences: Barriers Common to Mobile Device Users and 
People with Disabilities, for an introduction to this information.
http://www.w3.org/WAI/mobile/experiences-table

Transcribe Your Podcasts
By Christopher Schmitt.
"...With a transcription, you gain so much: improve search results, 
accessible content, browser-agnostic content. For the price of some 
decent hardware, you get to move your content to more eyes-not just 
ears. If you aren't willing to put down the money do that, then why are 
you publishing in the first place?"
http://www.christopherschmitt.com/2009/06/26/transcribe-your-podcasts/

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

CSS Cascade - A Simple Step-by-Step Presentation
By Russ Weakley.
"Here is a presentation I gave on the CSS cascade at a company training 
session recently. A simple step-by-step tutorial on the CSS cascade - 
for web designers and developers who are new to CSS or have struggled 
with the Cascade..."
http://www.maxdesign.com.au/2009/06/30/css-cascade/

A Primer on the CSS Font Shorthand Property
By Impressive Webs.
"...In this article I'll describe how the css font shorthand property 
is used, how it can be misused, and what potential drawbacks there 
might be to including it in your CSS code..."
http://tinyurl.com/nmombx

+03: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Top Six Don'ts for Usability Testing
By Jeff Sexton.
"1. Never ask, 'What do you think about this?' 2. Don't feed the tester 
your question. 3. Don't let users be the designers. 4. Don't let the 
statistics fool you. 5. Don't get discouraged. 6. Don't try to test too 
much at once."
http://tinyurl.com/l7w63f

+04: EVENTS.

WebAIM Training
September 30 - October 1, 2009.
Logan, Utah, U.S.A.
http://www.webaim.org/training/

+05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

The 7 Wonders of Wireframes
By Paul Boag.
"Quick, hand drawn wireframes can provide substantial benefits that 
will save you time and money..."
http://boagworld.com/design/the-7-wonders-of-wireframes

+06: JAVASCRIPT.

The Evolution of Client-Side Scripting
By Bobby van der Sluis.
"An overview of all major browser scripting engine innovations and new 
DOM APIs that have recently arrived or will hopefully come our way 
soon..."
http://www.bobbyvandersluis.com/articles/clientside_scripting/

+07: MISCELLANEOUS.

Does Multitasking Kill Your Focus and Productivity?
By Alyssa Gregory.
"I like to think of myself as the master of multitasking..."
http://tinyurl.com/le3yyu

+08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

Introducing The Open Web Education Alliance
By Aaron Walter.
"The W3C recently announced an exciting new incubator group - The Open 
Web Education Alliance (OWEA) - that is certain to have a significant 
impact on helping web standards and best practices find their way into 
classrooms around the world..."
http://tinyurl.com/m3e384

<html> 5 Doctor
By Rich Clark, Bruce Lawson, Jack Osborne, Mike Robinson, Remy Sharp 
and Tom Leadbetter.
"...We will publish articles relating to HTML5 and it's semantics and 
how to use them, here and now. We will also be inviting questions, in 
the form of 'Ask the doctor' to help answer people's queries and 
questions. Answers will be posted in the form of articles for all to 
learn from..."
http://html5doctor.com/

HTML5 Video Fallbacks with Markup
By Christopher Blizzard.
"In a previous post on this blog we talked about using JavaScript to 
create video elements on the fly. While that was a good use case for 
the Mozilla's support site in this post we offer another set of methods 
that will likely find more use on the web. In fact you can see it in 
use on Mozilla's What's New in Firefox 3.5 video, this blog and we're 
starting to see pickup on the web as a whole..."
http://hacks.mozilla.org/2009/06/html5-video-fallbacks-markup/

HTML 5 Accessibility
By Steve Faulkner.
Steve's Standards.Next presentation slides.
http://www.slideshare.net/stevefaulkner/html-5-accessibility

HTML5 and XHTML2
By Michael(tm) Smith.
Mike's Web Directions presentation slides.
http://www.slideshare.net/sideshowbarker/html5-and-xhtml2

Concerning Flash and HTML5
By Ben Ward.
"Earlier today I took a certain amount of pleasure ripping into Jon 
Dowdell’s disingenuous Adobe on HTML5 post from last week. However, I 
happen to think that there are some useful points to be made about the 
relationship between Flash and HTML5, and how one affects the other..."
http://benward.me/blog/flash-and-html5

A Selection of Supported Features in HTML5
By Molly E. Holzschlag.
"This information is provided as is, please know that HTML5 is a 
rapidly evolving specification and this refers only to these specific 
features in current versions of Web browsers (Chrome 1, Firefox 3, IE8, 
Opera 9.64, Safari 4.0) unless otherwise noted."
http://molly.com/html5/html5-0709.html

Codecs HTML 5
By Tristan Nitot.
"Ian Hickson Hixie, who wrote the HTML 5 specification reviews the 
codecs for the audio and video In essence, the HTML 5 recommendation 
does not require a particular codec, because it is impossible to reach 
agreement with stakeholders. Hixie explains the position of each..."
http://standblog.org/blog/post/2009/06/30/Les-codecs-de-HTML-5

+09: USABILITY.

What Intranet Content Should be in PDF Format?
By Alex Manchester.
"...HTML is designed to be read on screen, while PDFs are really 
designed to be printed out...One of the most popular uses for PDFs in 
organizations is for forms. Yet, a modern intranet should be moving 
away from using PDFs for this purpose, and instead using 
fully-developed online forms (because intranets should be places for 
doing things, not just finding and downloading material to be 
printed)..."
http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/cmb_pdfintranet/index.html

+10: XML.

XHTML Design Aims
By W3C.
"In designing XHTML 2, a number of design aims were kept in mind to 
help direct the design. These included..."
http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/introduction.html#aims

[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 
to subscribe and unsubscribe please visit:
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.]