[webdev] Web Design Update: December 29, 2009

Tue Dec 29 02:42:38 CST 2009

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 8, Issue 27, December 29, 2009.

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

++ISSUE 27 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: DREAMWEAVER.
05: EVALUATION & TESTING.
06: EVENTS.
07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.
08: JAVASCRIPT.
09: NAVIGATION.
10: PHP.
11: TYPOGRAPHY.
12: USABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Web Site Design Suggestions for People with Dyslexia
By John Rochford.
"Dyslexia is a learning disorder that affects reading, writing, 
spelling and language.  It is diagnosed in people of all levels of 
intelligence..."
http://tinyurl.com/ylfapek

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

CSS3 Borders, Backgrounds and Box-Shadows
By Zi Bin, Cheah, Vadim Makeev.
"In this article, we will showcase some examples made using the new 
properties in the W3C's CSS3 Backgrounds and Borders specification. We 
recommend using our Opera 10.5 pre-alpha release to view these examples 
in their full glory..."
http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/css3-border-background-boxshadow/

CSS3 Transitions and 2D Transforms
By David Storey, Molly E. Holzschlag.
"For richer user interfaces it is often desirable to include some 
animation to make an effect smoother or more appealing, or effects such 
as rotating elements and text. Traditionally in HTML pages the primary 
means to add animations was to use JavaScript to adjust the desired CSS 
property value over a given period of time. This works but can be 
slower as the JavaScript code is not hardware or software accelerated. 
What's more, using JavaScript for animations creates more code to 
maintain. It has not been possible to apply effects such as text at an 
angle without resorting to using images or SVG..."
http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/css3-transitions-and-2d-transforms/

Selectors Level 3
W3C Proposed Recommendation 15 December 2009
By W3C.
"...This document describes the selectors that already exist in CSS1 
[CSS1] and CSS2 [CSS21], and further introduces new selectors for CSS3 
and other languages that may need them..."
http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/PR-css3-selectors-20091215/

A Look at Some of the New Selectors Introduced in CSS3
By Tom Kenny.
"...Here is a run-down of just some of the things that is possible with 
CSS3 selectors. Of course CSS3 isn't supported at all by any IE 
browsers including IE8 but all latest versions of Safari, Firefox and 
Opera support most, if not all of them..."
http://tinyurl.com/mcy4o6

Ignorance Is Bliss
By Andy Clarke.
"In the real world, people using the Web don't find a Web site that 
they like, then open up another browser to check that it looks they 
same. They simply buy what they came to buy, read what they came to 
read, do what they came to do, then get on with their lives in blissful 
ignorance of what they might be seeing in another browser. Often when I 
talk or write about using progressive CSS, people ask me, 'How do you 
convince clients to let you work that way? What's your secret?' Secret? 
I tell them what they need to know, on a need-to-know basis..."
http://24ways.org/2009/ignorance-is-bliss

+03: COLOR.

Wharton Assitt's Pages on Colour Theory and Typeface Design
By Wharton Assitt.
"This website is the manifestation of my studies in the field of how 
words look."
http://www.hgrebdes.com/

+04: DREAMWEAVER.

Getting StartED with CSS
By David Powers.
Three chapter excerpts (PDFs) from David Powers' book on styling 
tables, backgrounds, and borders
http://tinyurl.com/y8jqnl8

+05: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Don Norman on Ethnography and Innovation
By James Kalbach.
"Overall, it seems other examinations of innovation have proven the 
exact opposite of what Norman claims in his article. There is indeed a 
wealth of evidence that people's needs can and should precede 
technology. And frankly, Norman's 'examination' seems more of the 
back-of-the-napkin type with several errors."
http://tinyurl.com/yzm37sr

+06: EVENTS.

Crockford on JavaScript - A Public Lecture Series at Yahoo
January 25, 2010.
February 5, 2010.
February 17, 2010.
March 3, 2010.
March 31, 2010.
Sunnyvale, California, U.S.A.
http://yuiblog.com/crockford/

Minnewebcon
April 12, 2010.
Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.A.
http://www.minnewebcon.umn.edu/

Usability Week 2010 Conference, London
May 16-21, 2010.
London, United Kingdom.
http://www.nngroup.com/events/london/agenda.html

+07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

Is the Value of Information Architecture a Myth?
By Lou Storiale.
"For large sites, portals or company intranets Value BEGINS with the 
information architecture. There is nothing else that matters as much as 
Information Architecture in these instances. If people can't find the 
information they are looking for, the application is useless. It does 
not matter how great the design is, how fast the page loads, how cute 
the menu drop-downs are - what matters is intuitively organized 
information that is easily accessible."
http://storiale.com/blog/?p=575

Journal of Information Architecture: Current Issue
"The difference between usability and user experience (UX) design is 
often explained as the latter trying to paint a richer picture and pay 
attention to engaging users in the process of interaction1. This is 
preferably accomplished by providing an engaging experience. In 
particular informational applications are often supposed to be 
entertaining. In many circumstances this is beneficial and highly 
appropriate, particularly in the context of low-choice interaction 
scenarios such as news and entertainment-related content or 
applications. However, the important condition to remember is context. 
In fact, context is the crucial aspect to consider when creating an 
environment that allows playful and experimental emotions to emerge."
http://journalofia.org/issue/

Make Your Mockup in Markup
By Meagan Fisher.
"...Recently, thanks in large part to the influence of design hero Dan 
Cederholm, I've come to the conclusion that a website's design should 
begin where it's going to live: in the browser..."
http://24ways.org/2009/make-your-mockup-in-markup

+08: JAVASCRIPT.

Are JavaScript Alerts Accessible?
By WebAIM Thread.
"Quite a simple question - but I think I might get a rather verbose
response..."
http://webaim.org/discussion/mail_thread.php?thread=4076

+09: NAVIGATION.

Headings
By WebAIM Thread.
"Perhaps someone could help me, I've been criticized by someone that
the following site http://www.ccecnfb.org/ is missing headings, I'm
assuming they mean my navigation areas. Is this correct?..."
http://webaim.org/discussion/mail_thread.php?thread=4074

+10: PHP.

1,500 Lines of Code
By Terry Chay.
"Even the best of us can only write 1,500 lines of code a day, so we 
need to make those lines count..."
http://phpadvent.org/2009/1500-lines-of-code-by-terry-chay

Exceptional PHP
By Brandon Savage.
"Call me crazy, but I love exceptions. I love exceptions to the rules. 
I love exceptions to language syntax, both programming and natural. I 
especially love programming exceptions. The incredible power of 
programming exceptions - the ability to direct program flow based on a 
particular set of unusual conditions - is the coolest thing in the 
world. So, when I was asked to contribute to PHP Advent, I decided to 
write about my favorite programming tool."
http://phpadvent.org/2009/exceptional-php-by-brandon-savage

+11: TYPOGRAPHY.

Real Fonts and Rendering - The New Elephant in the Room
By Jeffrey Zeldman.
"...There are ways around this ugly type ugliness, but they involve 
complicated scripting and sniffing-the very nightmares from which web 
standards and the simplicity of @font-face were supposed to save us. I 
don't know that even mighty Typekit has figured out every needed 
variation yet (although, working with foundries, they probably will). 
For type foundries, the complexity and expense of rethinking classic 
typefaces to survive in these hostile environments may further delay 
widespread adoption of web fonts and the resolution of licensing and 
formatting issues. The complexity may also force designers (even those 
who prefer to own) to rely on a hosted rental model simply to outsource 
and stay current with the detection and programming required. Forgive 
my tears. I stand in a potter's field of ideas like 'Keep it simple,' 
by a grave whose headstone reads 'Write once, publish everywhere'."
http://24ways.org/2009/real-fonts-and-rendering

+12: USABILITY.

It's a Myth That All Capital Letters Are Inherently Harder to Read
By Susan Weinschenk.
"...You read by anticipating the letters that will be in words, and 
then recognizing those letters. All capital (uppercase) letters are 
slower for people to read, but only because they aren't used to them. 
Mixed case text is only faster to read than uppercase letters because 
of practice. Most of what you read is mixed case, and so you are used 
to it. If people practice reading text that is in all capital letters 
they can get to the point where they are reading that text as fast as 
they usually read mixed case. This doesn't mean you should start using 
uppercase or capital letters for all of your text. People are not used 
to reading that way, so it will slow them down, and these days it's 
perceived as 'shouting'. But now you know that uppercase letters are 
not inherently harder to read..."
http://tinyurl.com/yjj2m74

All Caps: A Dyslexics Plea
By LaFeminista.
"...I have a severe form of dyslexia which fortunately was detected 
when I was very young and I received special schooling. However it 
still took me until I was ten to read properly so I developed quite a 
good visual memory hence mathematics was no problem. However letters 
mean little to me still I read by a form of pictogram system. Every 
word has a shape therefore I read the word by its visual form and not 
its content..."
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/10/5/92835/7644

User-Friendly Error Messages: 7 Tips
By AGConsult.
"A lot of websites make usability mistakes on their form pages. And 
that costs visitors. On a form page that's extra painful because if you 
lose a visitor there, you loose a very valuable visitor. A visitor 
who's willing to make the effort to get in touch with you or perhaps 
even to order something. A visitor who fills out a form (or tries to) 
is a visitor you should cherish. Here's a few tips..."
http://webusability-blog.com/user-friendly-error-messages-7-tips/

[Section one ends.]

++ SECTION TWO:

+13: 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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+ 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.]