[webdev] Web Design Update: July 17, 2009

[Laura Carlson]

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 8, Issue 03, July 17, 2009.

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

++ISSUE 03 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: EVENTS.
03: JAVASCRIPT.
04: PHP.
05: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
06: TOOLS.
07: USABILITY.
08: XML.

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

[Contents ends.]


++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Relationship Between Mobile Web Best Practices (MWBP) and Web Content 
Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)
By Alan Chuter and Yeliz Yesilada, Editors.
"This technical report helps Web developers meet both Web Content 
Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 
(MWBP). It describes the similarities and differences between 
requirements in WCAG and MWPB. It is designed primarily to help Web 
developers who have worked with either WCAG or MWBP to learn about the 
additional requirements in the other."
http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/NOTE-mwbp-wcag-20090709/

Your Page Title Matters More Than You Think
By Skye.
"...The page title is the first thing that screen reader users hear 
when they get to a page, so it's great if it actually tells them what 
the page is. If every page on your blog has just the name of the home 
page, that's not so helpful and could even be disorienting if a reader 
goes from your home page to one of your posts, or vice versa..."
http://tinyurl.com/noqxze

Keyboard Accessibility in Web Applications, part 2
By Mihai Sucan.
"...In the first part of the article we added keyboard shortcuts to a 
simple paint application. Now we will implement a way to move the 
pointer inside the drawing canvas using keyboard shortcuts..."
http://tinyurl.com/l7rfnc

Representative Markey Introduces 21st Century Communications & Video 
Accessibility Act of 2009 to Make Broadband More Accessible
By Coalition of Organizations for Accessible Technology (COATS).
"Before Congress adjourned on June 26, Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) introduced 
the "21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2009" 
(H.R. 3101). This comprehensive measure would modernize disability 
accessibility mandates in the Communications Act, bringing existing 
requirements up to date as TV and phone services connect via the 
Internet and use new digital and broadband technologies..."
http://www.coataccess.org/node/4011


+02: EVENTS.

The HTML 5 Experiments - Bruce Lawson
July 23, 2009.
Stanford University
Palo Alto, California, U.S.A.
http://events.stanford.edu/events/198/19845/

EuroIA Summit '09
September 24-26, 2009.
Copenhagen, Denmark
http://www.euroia.org

Human Work Interaction Design '09
Working Conference on Usability in Social, Cultural and Organizational 
Contexts
October 7-8, 2009.
Pune University, India
http://hcdc.cdac.in/hwid/

Web Directions South 2009
October 6-9, 2009.
Sydney, Australia
http://south09.webdirections.org/


+03: JAVASCRIPT.

Native Drag and Drop
By Remy Sharp.
"Along with an army of JavaScript APIs, HTML 5 comes with a Drag and 
Drop (DnD) API that brings native DnD support to the browser making it 
much easier to code up..."
http://html5doctor.com/native-drag-and-drop/


+04: PHP.

More on PHP Performance
By Stas Malyshev.
"After writing the post criticizing Google's 'performance advice' for 
PHP beginners, I started thinking ? OK, I don't like Google's advice, 
what would I propose instead?..."
http://php100.wordpress.com/2009/07/13/php-performance/


+05: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

HTML5 - The Section Element
By Virginia DeBolt.
"...The section element is a new semantic element. It groups related 
content. This might be a part or chapter in a book, a section in a 
chapter, or  anything that had its own heading in HTML 4. Each section 
may include other new semantic elements such as header and footer, and 
well as various kinds of HTML elements such as images, paragraphs, 
list, etc..."
http://www.webteacher.ws/2009/07/10/html5-the-section-element/

Semantic Navigation With the Nav Element
By Tom Leadbetter.
"One of the new elements for HTML 5 is the <nav> element which allows 
you to group together links, resulting in more semantic markup and 
extra structure which may help screenreaders. In this article I'll 
discuss how and where to use it as well as some reservations I have 
with the specifications definition..."
http://html5doctor.com/nav-element/

The Future of summary in HTML 5
By Joshue O Connor.
"There will soon be a HTML 5 working group vote on whether the summary 
attribute (@summary) should be reinstated in HTML 5 and Joshue O Connor 
of NCBI CFIT is writing the first draft of the text that will be 
reviewed by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). It is currently 
obsolete."
http://www.cfit.ie/index.php/now-archive/86-summary-in-html-5

Video for Everybody!
By Kroc Camen.
"Video for Everybody is very simply a chunk of HTML code that embeds a 
video into a website using the HTML5 <video> element which offers 
native playback in Firefox 3.5 and Safari 3 & 4"
http://camendesign.com/code/video_for_everybody

More Video Accessibility Work
By Silvia Pfeiffer.
"...My aim is two-fold: firstly to improve the HTML5 audio and video 
tags with textual representations, and secondly to hook up the Ogg file 
format with these accessibility features through an Ogg-internal text 
codec..."
http://blog.gingertech.net/2009/07/14/more-video-accessibility-work/

Vendor Veto
By Sam Ruby.
"Shelley Powers recently made a good faith effort to create a Formal 
Objection; however, to date I have not found a way to treat it as such. 
The concern is certainly valid, but we need to find a process for 
dealing with the issue, and this post is a part of the process for 
determining the process..."
http://intertwingly.net/blog/2009/07/11/Vendor-Veto

Canvas, Accessibility and SVG
By Bruce Lawson.
"Since watching Steve Faulkner's standards.next presentation about HTML 
5 accessibility, I've become more interested in the accessibility of 
the canvas element. canvas is a method of producing dynamic graphics 
with JavaScript: The canvas element represents a resolution-dependent 
bitmap canvas, which can be used for rendering graphs, game graphics, 
or other visual images on the fly..."
http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2009/canvas-accessibility-and-svg/

Block-level Links in HTML 5
By Bruce Lawson.
"One new and exciting thing you can do in HTML 5 is wrap links round 
'block-level' elements..."
http://html5doctor.com/block-level-links-in-html-5/

HTML 5: nav Ambiguity Resolved
By Jeffery Zeldman.
"An e-mail from Chairman Hickson resolves an ambiguity in the nav 
element of HTML 5..."
http://www.zeldman.com/2009/07/13/html-5-nav-ambiguity-resolved/

Survivor - W3C
By Shelly Powers.
"...XHTML will continue, but it's a weakened XHTML, barely given enough 
oxygen to survive. In the wake of its rude abandonment, other 
affiliated groups, including the RDFa group, are left to scramble about 
as best they can to find a base. Sam Ruby of the HTML WG has encouraged 
them to jump into the HTML 5 web waters, and grab a copy of HTML 5 as a 
raft to ride to the future. I hope we will be forgiven, though, if we 
see the raft as a desperate, leaky ride, at best..."
http://tinyurl.com/md6p43

HTML 5 is a Mess
By Bruce Lawson.
"'HTML 5 is a mess', said John Allsopp. I agree. It is. It's also 
several different kind of messes, not all of which are avoidable or 
bad. Let's look at them..."
http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2009/html-5-is-a-mess/

HTML 5 is a Mess. Now What?
By Jeffery Zeldman.
"...As confused as I have continually felt while surfing this 
whirlwind, I have never stopped being certain of two things: 1. XHTML 
1.0?and for that matter, HTML 4.01?will continue to work long after I 
and my websites are gone...2. That said, the creation of a new markup 
language concerns us all, and an informed community will only help the 
framers of HTML 5 navigate the sharp rocks of tricky shoals..."
http://www.zeldman.com/2009/07/16/html-5-is-a-mess-now-what/

Microformats, Key Flaws
By Jens Meiert.
"I like the idea behind microformats, but I'm still not convinced of 
the way that idea is brought to life. I see three major flaws..."
http://meiert.com/en/blog/20090716/microformats-key-flaws/


+06: TOOLS.

i18n checker
By Richard Ishida.
"This page looks for character encoding and language declarations in 
the HTTP headers or the head element of an (X)HTML page. NOTE: This 
tool is still in the early stages of development. It is guaranteed to 
contain bugs and lack features you'd like..."
http://rishida.net/tools/i18nchecker/index.php

Photosensitive Epilepsy Analysis Tool (PEAT)
By Trace Center.
"...PEAT can help authors determine whether animations or video in 
their content are likely to cause seizures. Not all content needs to be 
evaluated by PEAT, but content that contains video or animation should 
be evaluated, especially if that content contains flashing or rapid 
transitions between light and dark background colors...(Windows Vista, 
or Windows XP with some restrictions).."
http://trace.wisc.edu/peat/


+07: USABILITY.

Adding Features Adds Complexity
By Gerry McGovern.
"Many website managers fail to recognize that any addition to the
website adds complexity, which may result in confused and lost
customers."
http://tinyurl.com/n88t2b


+08: XML.

I've Still Got the Greatest Enthusiasm and Confidence in the Mission
By Shane McCarron.
"HTML5 is here to stay. I get that. But that doesn't mean we have to 
continue to repeat our mistakes. Ignoring the HTML4 specification was a 
mistake. Ignoring the XHTML specification(s) is also a mistake. 
Pretending that the 'XHTML5' part of HTML5 somehow continues the 
evolution of XHTML as part of the XML toolchain is a gigantic mistake. 
HTML5 has no extensibility model. It has no way to incorporate other 
public or private grammars into the content model. It has no model to 
define and connect RDF grammars that would expand the semantics of the 
language. It has no behavioral rules that describe how user agents must 
behave that will permit this extensibility going forward...."
http://tinyurl.com/n6ros5

HTML5 and XHTML5 - MIME is The Answer
By Molly E. Holzschlag.
"Currently, all the HTML5 / XML 'serialization' stuff simply boils down 
to two straight-forward rules..."
http://www.molly.com/2009/07/14/html5-xhtml5-mime-is-the-answer/


[Section one ends.]


++ SECTION TWO:

+09: 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.]