[webdev] Web Design Update: July 24, 2009

[Laura Carlson]

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 8, Issue 04, July 24, 2009.

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

++ISSUE 04 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: MISCELLANEOUS.
07: PHP.
08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
09: TOOLS.
10: USABILITY.
11: XML.

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

[Contents ends.]


++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

The Inclusion Principle
By Margit Link-Rodrigue.
"To make accessible design an organic element of front-end development, 
we must free our thinking from the constraints we associate with 
accessible design and embrace the inclusion principle. Margit 
Link-Rodrigue tells us how."
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/the-inclusion-principle/

CAPTCHA and Accessibility
By John Foliot.
"...Eliminating blog spam is a real issue, however CAPTCHA is just not 
the best way of doing this.  Fortunately, better methods are emerging, 
and implementing these better means is becoming increasingly easy to 
do. Avoiding CAPTCHAs reduces access barriers for all users, and 
improves
usability across the board.
http://tinyurl.com/m9epn8

 From Web Accessibility To Web Adaptability: A Summary
By Brian Kelly.
"In this post I will give a extended summary of the ideas and 
approaches outlined in our paper..."
http://tinyurl.com/ltuj9d

Open Source Screen Reader Gives Sighted Individuals a Glimpse into the 
Blind World
By Glenda Watson Hyatt.
"Recently I came across NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA) ? a free and 
open source screen reader compatible with Microsoft Windows. Not only 
does NVDA give individuals with visual impairments an alternative to 
the ridiculously over-priced screen readers, it also provides the rest 
of us the opportunity to experience screen readers..."
http://tinyurl.com/nbcc38

Accessible PDF - Revisited
By John Eric Brandt.
"I attended the Adobe Acrobat Users webinar a few weeks back and was 
pleased and satisfied that both what I have been doing, and what I have 
been advocating others to do, is the proper course of action..."
http://jebswebs.net/blog/2009/07/accessible-pdf-revisited/


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

CSS3 Previews
By css3.info.
"Many exciting new functions and features are being thought up for 
CSS3. We will try and showcase some of them on this page, when they get 
implemented in either Firefox, Konqueror, Opera or Safari/Webkit."
http://www.css3.info/preview/

The Power of HTML 5 and CSS 3
By Jeff Starr.
"...As we continue to push the boundaries of existing languages, HTML 5 
and CSS 3 are quickly gaining popularity, revealing their collective 
power with some exciting new design possibilities..."
http://perishablepress.com/press/2009/07/19/power-of-html5-css3/


+03: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Five Common Usability Testing Mistakes to Avoid
By Bradley Hebdon.
"Usability testing is not an easy thing to perfect. However, a good 
starting point is to identify where most mistakes are made throughout 
the process. And through this awareness, you should fine-tune your 
approaches to planning, moderation and analysis, in order to attain 
truly insightful findings..."
http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article5798.asp


+04: EVENTS.

Handcrafted CSS
September 14, 2009.
Salem, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
http://handcraftedcss.com/workshop/

Adobe MAX 2009
October 4-7, 2009.
Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.
http://max.adobe.com/

Do-It-Yourself Usability Testing Workshop
October 29-30, 2009 in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.
November 9-10, 2009 in Washington, DC, U.S.A.
http://www.sensible.com/workshops.html


+05: JAVASCRIPT.

Case and Negation in JavaScript Regular Expressions
By: Chrysanthus Forcha.
"...we'll look at the effects of case sensitivity, how to use negation, 
and more..."
http://tinyurl.com/mv5w47

Accessibility and Native Drag and Drop
By Remy Sharp.
"A few days before my native drag and drop article came out Gez Lemon 
wrote about accessibility in drag and drop, and touched on HTML 5..."
http://html5doctor.com/accessibility-native-drag-and-drop/


+06: MISCELLANEOUS.

Interview: Opera Software's Chris Mills
By Raena Jackson Armitage.
"...Chris Mills is a web evangelist and developer relations editor at 
Opera Software, and a major contributor to the Opera blogs and the 
Opera Web Standards Curriculum. We grabbed Chris for a quick chat about 
his work, Ed Directions, and the state of web education generally..."
http://tinyurl.com/n8k24w


+07: PHP.

XML and PHP Simplified - XML,PHP and the Database
By J. Leidago Noabeb.
"Because PHP treats an XML document like a normal file, it is easy to 
interact with it, even though its structure is complicated. For example 
to create a XML document, we use the common functions that PHP uses to 
create files..."
http://tinyurl.com/moey44


+08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

Proposal - Accessibility Issues Procedure (HTML5)
Laura Carlson, Bruce Lawson, Catherine Roy, Debi Orton, Gez Lemon, 
Jason White, John Foliot, Leif Halvard Silli, Robert Burns, and Steve 
Faulkner.
"...we propose that the HTML working group adopt the following 
statement as an official procedure and publish it in HTML working group 
Web space..."
http://esw.w3.org/topic/HTML/AccessibilityIssueProcedure

HTML5 and The Future of the Web
By Tim Wright.
"...In this article, I'm hoping to give you some tips and insight into 
HTML5 to help ease the inevitable pain that comes with transitioning to 
a slightly different syntax..."
http://tinyurl.com/ko6csf

HTML 5 Boilerplates
By Remy Sharp.
"Without going in to the discussion of why HTML 5 is available today 
and not 2022, this article is going to give you a series of HTML 5 
boilerplates that you can use in your projects right now..."
http://html5doctor.com/html-5-boilerplates/

HTML5 Tips - Structural elements, Doctype and ARIA
By Henny Swan.
"...I thought I'd post a few tips along the way that I've found  have 
helped with the redesign process..."
http://www.iheni.com/html5-tips-structure-doctype-aria/

Comic Update: The HTML5 Suggestion Box
By Kyle Weems.
"...RDFa, ARIA, and other fruits of the loins of other W3C chartered 
working groups are being disregarded by the HTML5 people consistently, 
or being carefully argued away with a pleading for use cases, a 
suggestion that their expertise is flawed, or that alternate solutions 
(read that: the WHAT WG's solutions) are the better option..."
http://tinyurl.com/lnvlur

Let Loose the Hounds of War
By Shelley Powers.
"The space around HTML 5 just got more active, though whether what will 
follow will be an improvement in conditions is hard to say..."
http://burningbird.net/node/24

Restructuring HTML5
By Manu Sporny.
"By halting the XHTML2 work and announcing more resources for the HTML5 
project, the World Wide Web Consortium has sent a clear signal on the 
future markup language for the Web: it will be HTML5. Unfortunately, 
the decision comes at a time when many working with Web standards have 
taken issue with the way the HTML5 specification is being developed..."
http://html5.digitalbazaar.com/a-new-way-forward


+09: TOOLS.

HTML 5 Outliner
By Geoffrey Sneddon.
Tool for testing structure in HTML5. It tests the outline algorithm.
http://gsnedders.html5.org/outliner/

Quality Assurance tools for HTML5
By Simon Pieters.
"I see more and more people switch over to HTML5 these days, and to 
help you make sure you did things correctly, there are some tools at 
your disposal that might be good to know about..."
http://blog.whatwg.org/quality-assurance-tools-for-html5


+10: USABILITY.

The Impact of Aesthetics on Attitudes Towards Websites
By Jennifer Chen.
"A user's perception of a Web site can evoke a wide range of emotions 
and attitudes.  These emotions and perceptions impact the user's 
attitude towards the Web site's content, advertised products, company, 
credibility and site usability..."
http://www.usability.gov/articles/062009news.html

Mobile Usability
By Jakob Nielsen.
"In user testing, website use on mobile devices got very low scores, 
especially when users accessed "full" sites that weren't designed for 
mobile."
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mobile-usability.html


+11: XML.

Unwebbable
By Joe Clark.
"It's time we came to grips with the fact that not every 'document' can 
be a 'web page.' Some forms of writing just cannot be expressed in HTML 
- or they need to be bent and distorted to do so. But for once, XML 
might actually help."
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/unwebbable/

Unwebbable Castoffs
By Joe Clark.
"We cut the 'Unwebbable' article (q.v.) in half for space and, in 
general, to make it better..."
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/unwebbable/

XHTML- Not Dead
By Steven Pemberton.
"...What this does mean is that we no longer have to adhere to the 
membership rules of W3C to do the work, so if you want to get involved 
in the future work on XHTML2, please get in touch, at xhtml2 at 
future-web dot org..."
http://www.pemberton.nl/vandf/2009/07/xhtml2-not-dead.html

XHTML is Dead - Viva HTML5?
By Joshue O Connor.
"...So in short, this turn of events is by way of increasing resources 
for HTML 5 and its development. Is this a good thing? I don't know, the 
current HTML 5 specification is effectively in the hands of one man and 
effectively, one vendor. This makes for a powerful arbiter in the 
development of this most useful language - which is the life blood of 
the internet. This is an inordinate amount of power for one 
organization to have..."
http://tinyurl.com/kpmzlv

Humpty Dumpty
By Sam Ruby.
"... one such thing that apparently some people want is to produce what 
they perceive as cleaner markup.  Cleaner is clearly in the eye of the 
beholder, but for some people that means things like quoting 
attributes.  In fact, that is something that HTML 4.01 explicitly 
recommended ? a recommendation that, to date, has not carried forward 
to HTML5.  Their reasons people might want to follow this 
recommendation vary, but for some the intent is to produce polyglot 
documents..."
http://intertwingly.net/blog/2009/07/19/Humpty-Dumpty

Just How Accessible is SVG?
By Henny Swan.
"I've been dipping my toes into Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) lately 
and wondering how this can be made accessible and usable for all. It 
seems like a very under used technology which is a pity given it's 
potential to be more readable by assistive technologies such as screen 
readers, braille displays and screen magnification than other graphic 
type solutions."
http://www.iheni.com/just-how-accessible-is-svg/

[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.]