[webdev] Web Design Update: August 14, 2009

Fri Aug 14 06:43:25 CDT 2009

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 8, Issue 07, August 14, 2009.

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

++ISSUE 07 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: COLOR.
04: EVALUATION & TESTING.
05: EVENTS.
06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.
07: JAVASCRIPT.
08: MISCELLANEOUS.
09: NAVIGATION.
10: PHP.
11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
12: TOOLS.
13: USABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

University of Wisconsin Researchers Develop Tool to Prevent Seizures
By Erica Hendry.
"For some people, the quick flashes or bright colors of online 
advertisements can set off seizures in a matter of seconds. Now 
researchers at the University of Wisconsin at Madison have designed the 
Photosensitive Epilepsy Analysis Tool-or PEAT-a free software tool that 
will help Web developers design safer Web pages and advertisements..."
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/U-of-Wisconsin-Researchers/7606/

CVS.com To Meet Web Accessibility Standards
By Mel Pedley.
"CVS/pharmacy, the United State's largest retail pharmacy, recently 
announced that it will enhance web accessibility on its site..."
http://tinyurl.com/noujo5

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Best CSS Editors for Beginners
By Lorraine Nepomuceno.
"I recently helped someone new to CSS get started, and we looked 
through several CSS editors? the best of which I bring to you here.."
http://www.devlounge.net/code/best-css-editors-for-beginners

Mastering CSS, Part 1: Styling Design Elements
By Cameron Chapman.
"...Below are fresh tips and techniques for creating and styling design 
elements with CSS. They're a good place to start if you're new to CSS 
but are valuable even if you're a veteran designer. Not all the 
techniques are strictly CSS; some include integration with JavaScript 
or XHTML to extend the functionality of your site..."
http://tinyurl.com/ld6uat

Mastering CSS, Part 2: Advanced Techniques and Tools
By Cameron Chapman.
"...In Part 2 we're offering up some more advanced techniques and 
effects you can achieve with CSS. Everything from creating your own 
online apps (like calendars) to styling web pages for use with the 
iPhone to some basics of working with CSS3 is covered here..."
http://tinyurl.com/laxphk

+03: COLOR.

Color and Accessibility
By merttol.
"In the United States, about 7 percent of the male population - or 
about 10.5 million men - and 0.4 percent of the female population 
either cannot distinguish red from green, or see red and green 
differently (Howard Hughes Medical Institute, 2006). And, more than 10% 
of the male population is color-blind in all over the world. There are 
various forms of color-blindness: red-green, green-brown, and so on. Of 
course, we cannot possibly avoid all of the colors that could be 
misinterpreted by all visitors with color vision impairment..."
http://www.merttol.com/articles/web/color-and-accessibility.html

+04: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Margins of Error in Usability Tests
By Jeff Sauro.
"How many users will complete the task and how long will it take them? 
If you need to benchmark an interface, then a summative usability test 
is one way to answer these questions. Summative tests are the 
gold-standard for usability measurement. But just how precise are the 
metrics?..."
http://www.measuringusability.com/time-margin.php

Persona Format
By Fluid Project Wiki.
"This persona format was created to organize information in the Fluid 
Personas. The format chosen was based on the competitive analysis of 
many persona examples..."
http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Persona+Format

+05: EVENTS.

Webinar Series
Online Videos 360: How to Create Better, Viral, and ADA-Compliant Web 
Videos
September 15, 16 & 17, 2009.
http://tinyurl.com/nodprt

Thriving on Diversity - Information Opportunities in a Pluralistic World
November 6-11, 2009.
Vancouver, Canada
http://www.asis.org/Conferences/AM09/

World Usability Day
November 13, 2009.
Everywhere.
http://worldusabilityday.org/

+06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

How I Draft an Information Architecture
By Donna Spencer.
When I teach information architecture, the most common questions aren't 
about the principles, but about the process. Just how do you decide on 
a particular method, how do you choose categories, how do you know what 
you've come up with is right.
http://tinyurl.com/nrbdrg

+07: JAVASCRIPT.

YUI Theater - Douglas Crockford: 'The JSON Saga'
By Eric Miraglia.
"At the July 27 meeting of the Bayjax group, hosted here at Yahoo!, we 
had a lineup of terrific speakers. The first of the Bayjax talks - 
Douglas Crockford's 'The JSON Saga' - is now available on YUI Theater, 
embedded below and available in high definition with a full transcript 
on the YUI Theater site..."
http://www.yuiblog.com/blog/2009/08/11/video-crockford-json/

+08: MISCELLANEOUS.

Dialogue in the Dark: A Journey into a World without Sight (podcast)
By Teresa Brazen.
"In this podcast, I'll take you with me on a journey into a world of 
darkness?where people use their hands, hearing and sense of smell to 
discover where they are. We'll explore an immersive exhibition called 
Dialogue in the Dark, were blind guides help visitors move through 
multiple environments, experiencing the world without sight..."
http://tinyurl.com/pzz7k5

Scott Berkun: Growing Ideas In The Garden Of Innovation
By Namahn interviews.
"...In this upbeat interview, Scott explains what drove him to write 
his book on innovation: after many years working in an 
innovation-obsessed software industry, he wanted to dispel the myths 
advocated in so much literature on the subject, or what he describes as 
the 'fantasy' that there is only one simple way to go about innovation 
and creative thinking..."
http://www.namahn.com/resources/interview/scott-berkun-growing-ideas

+09: NAVIGATION.

Skip Links: Chrome, Safari and Added WAI-ARIA
By Paul Ratcliffe.
"...creating a skiplink that works across a number of browsers and is 
actually usable to the end user is not a simple task. Spurred on by new 
functionality in some later browsers, the launch of Google's Chrome 
browser and some feedback we had regarding using skip links on a Mac, 
we thought we would re-examine skiplinks and present you with our 
latest thoughts..."
http://tinyurl.com/p4ohcb

SEO and Accessibility Overlap
By Liam McGee.
"...The skills we had developed in the field of web accessibility were, 
it seemed, directly applicable to many of the search engine 
optimization (SEO) challenges that face search specialists every day..."
http://www.communis.co.uk/blog/2009-08-06-seo-and-accessibility-overlap

Front End Concerns When Implementing Faceted Search
By Jared Spool.
"Faceted search brings us to the next level for easily finding some 
types of information. We can find cameras within a price range from 
specific manufacturers. We can quickly locate flights that leave in the 
afternoon on the airlines we're collecting miles with. We can easily 
discover jobs within driving distance that are for companies that we 
are enamored with..."
http://tinyurl.com/nzeo7n

+10: PHP.

5 Regular Expressions Every Web Programmer Should Know
By Mike Malone.
"I'm going to assume you have a basic understanding of regular 
expressions at this point. If you're a regex n00b (or /n0{2}b/, as I 
like to call them), or if you need a quick refresher, check out my 
previous post on the absolute bare minimum that every programmer should 
know about regular expressions. You won't be disappointed. So, without 
further adu, here are the five regular expressions that I have found 
the most useful for day-to-day web programming tasks"
http://tinyurl.com/2ss83t

Are PHP Namespaces Really So Bad?
By Craig Buckler.
"PHP developers have been demanding namespaces for some time. As PHP 
applications have grown larger and more complex, namespaces have become 
essential to prevent code clashes. My recent tutorials received a 
number of comments complaining about namespace implementation in PHP. 
The main issues were the syntax and the backslash character. Before I 
tackle those issues, let's take a quick look back at the history of 
PHP..."
http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/08/13/are-php-namespaces-bad/

+11: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

A First Look at HTML 5
By Marc Plotz.
"Officially, HTML 4.1 was supposed to be the last word on HTML..."
http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/marc_plotz008112009.php3

A Little More Conversation with Dialog
By Mike Robinson.
"Less action, more conversation. That's how that Elvis song went, 
right? OK, perhaps not. Regardless, the new dialog element introduced 
in HTML 5 is all about marking up the conversation, and it uses a 
couple of elements you may have already heard of. Sure, it's a little 
less action than something like audio, but it is still a useful element 
to semantically mark up many forms of dialogue..."
http://html5doctor.com/a-little-more-conversation-with-dialog/

Mountain, Mohammed; Mohammed, Mountain; Please Talk
By Sam Ruby.
"...And just to complete the insanity, I can get the relevant members 
of the PF WG to attend tomorrow's call, but not Ian."
http://tinyurl.com/qjubat

+12: TOOLS.

CSS Redundancy Checker
By Mike Malone.
"Use this tool to find CSS selectors that aren't used by any of your 
HTML files and may be redundant."
http://services.immike.net/css-checker/

+13: USABILITY.

Refreshing Three HCI Laws: Fitts' Law, Hick's Law, and the Power Law of 
Practice
By Gerd Waloszek.
"...I would like to offer a short refresher of Fitts' law and include 
two other 'classics,' Hick's law and the power law of practice...
http://www.sapdesignguild.org/community/design/laws.asp

Examples of Poor Responsiveness
By Gerd Waloszek.
"...In this article, I presented examples of poor responsiveness in 
three categories: (1) Systems that block user input, (2) systems that 
cannot keep up with user input, and (3) systems that impede the user by 
being too slow or by causing unnecessary delays. Tackling any of these 
issues will definitely make users happier and more satisfied, allowing 
them to feel in control and work at their own pace, thus being more 
productive."
http://www.sapdesignguild.org/community/design/response_examples.asp

Human-Computer Dialog: How Good Does 'Good Enough' Need to Be to Appear 
'Perfect'?
By Gerd Waloszek.
"...If designers take the design rules listed above into consideration, 
which may require them to invest more time and care in their work, 
users should become more tolerant to computer systems and may be more 
willing to accept one or two imperfections in the human-computer 
dialog. With enough care, "good enough" may require some effort, but 
need not necessarily mean that the human-computer dialog has to be 
perfect - 'good enough' will already be 'perfect' for human users."
http://www.sapdesignguild.org/community/design/good_enough.asp

Compliancy vs. Usability
By Jeff Singleton.
"Many times great effort and resource is put into making sure that a 
site is compliant with Section 508 or the WCAG requirements. All the 
ALT text is in place, input fields have labels, headings and page 
titles are used, etc. Everything is set and ready to go?at least from a 
technical standpoint. What often gets overlooked is the usability of 
the site. No matter how 'compliant' your site is it can still be 
unusable or at least not as easy to use as you may think. How so?..."
http://theaccesspond.com/2009/08/11/compliancy-vs-usability/

Study: Expected Versus Experienced Usability
By Jasper van Kuijk.
"In this paper. we explore why consumers do not seem to have a very 
distinct preference for usable products, even though these make satisfy 
them more after purchase. We wanted to explore the hypothesis that this 
might be due to the fact that it might be to hard for consumers to 
judge before use whether a product is usable or not. We call the 
pre-use assumptions that people have about the usability of a product 
expected usability. Experienced usability is the opinion people have 
about usability after use. We wanted to explore what product properties 
influence expected usability, and whether and when there is a 
difference between expected and experienced usability. And what the 
consequences of that are."
http://www.uselog.com/2009/08/study-expected-versus-experienced.html

[Section one ends.]

++ SECTION TWO:

+14: 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.

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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.]