[webdev] Web Design Update: April 22, 2010

Thu Apr 22 06:20:02 CDT 2010

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 8, Issue 43, April 22, 2010.

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

++ISSUE 43 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: DREAMWEAVER.
04: EVENTS.
05: JAVASCRIPT.
06: NAVIGATION.
07: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.
08: TYPOGRAPHY.
09: USABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Making Sure Hidden Frames are Hidden
By Steve Faulkner.
"...If an iframe contains content that is not intended for users, there 
are a number of things you can do to ensure it is not available to any 
users: 1. Use CSS display:none. 2. Set the height and width attributes 
to '0'. 3. set the tabindex attribute to '-1' 4. And just in case a user 
still manages to encounter the iframe, set the title attribute with text 
indicating it does not contain anything...."
http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/?p=604

Contacting Organizations about Inaccessible Websites
Editors: Andrew Arch, Shawn Lawton Henry and Shadi Abou-Zahra.
"Your feedback to an organization can help improve the accessibility of 
websites for you and many other people who use the websites. Website 
owners have many priorities for changes and improvements, and the more 
an organization hears about accessibility from people who use their 
website, the more likely it is that accessibility will become a higher 
priority..."
http://www.w3.org/WAI/users/inaccessible.html

Accessible Documents in HTML, Word, and PDF
By Terrill Thompson.
"Yesterday I gave a couple of presentations at the Digital Accessibility 
Expo, a wonderful event in its second year, hosted by the University of 
Illinois at Chicago..."
http://tinyurl.com/y46mwhd

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

15 CSS Habits to Develop for Frustration-Free Coding
By Jeremy Davis.
"It's been said that the key to a civilization's success is mastery of 
the food system. Unless a group of people can effectively control the 
basic needs for survival, they will never achieve greatness. Likewise, 
before CSS skills can be expanded to an advanced level, the basics must 
become instinct to any CSS coder. Develop these habits and you lay a 
solid foundation to apply advanced CSS techniques."
http://tinyurl.com/y3lootp

The Little Known font-size-adjust CSS3 Property
By Webdesigner Notebook.
"Ever wanted to use fallback fonts on your CSS with different aspect 
ratios without them looking huge (or tiny)? The sparkling new CSS3 
font-size-adjust  property could do just that, maybe."
http://tinyurl.com/ykfeo7a

+03: DREAMWEAVER.

Dreamweaver CS5 New Features Part 2: CSS Troubleshooting
By Sheri German.
"In this second article about the new features in Dreamweaver CS5, we'll 
look at some of the new ways Dreamweaver will help you troubleshoot your 
layouts. You'll wonder how you ever lived without CSS Inspect, or 
without the ability to enable and disable properties with the click of a 
button in the CSS Styles panel. You'll marvel at the new capabilities in 
the Style Rendering Toolbar, and become addicted to the new online 
service, BrowserLab."
http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=F4B2B

+04: EVENTS.

e-Access '10: Technology For All
July 13, 1010.
London, United Kingdom
http://www.headstar-events.com/eaccess10/

+05: JAVASCRIPT.

Better JavaScript Minification
By Nicholas C. Zakas.
"Like CSS, JavaScript works best and hardest when stored in an external 
file that can be downloaded and cached separately from our site's 
individual HTML pages. To increase performance, we limit the number of 
external requests and make our JavaScript as small as possible. 
JavaScript minification schemes began with JSMin in 2004 and progressed 
to the YUI Compressor in 2007. Now the inventor of Extreme JavaScript 
Compression with YUI Compressor reveals coding patterns that interfere 
with compression, and techniques to modify or avoid these coding 
patterns so as to improve the YUI Compressor's performance. Think small 
and live large."
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/better-javascript-minification/

Expand and Collapse Content Accessibly With Progressive Enhancement, 
jQuery, and ARIA
By Maggie Costello Wachs.
"Collapsible content areas are frequently presented in web sites and 
applications as a way to let users to control how content is shown or 
hidden on the page. Also called collapsibles, spin-downs, toggle panels, 
twisties, and content disclosures, they're ideal for selectively 
displaying optional information - like instructional text or additional 
details, for example - so users can focus on the task at hand and view 
this content only as needed..."
http://tinyurl.com/y5ssh3t

+06: NAVIGATION.

Design Patterns: Faceted Navigation
By Peter Morville, Jeffery Callender.
"Faceted navigation may be the most significant search innovation of the 
past decade. It features an integrated, incremental search and browse 
experience that lets users begin with a classic keyword search and then 
scan a list of results. It also serves up a custom map that provides 
insights into the content and its organization and offers a variety of 
useful next steps. In keeping with the principles of progressive 
disclosure and incremental construction, it lets users formulate the 
equivalent of a sophisticated Boolean query by taking a series of small, 
simple steps. Learn how it works, why it has become ubiquitous in 
e-commerce, and why it's not for every site."
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/design-patterns-faceted-navigation/

+07: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS.

New Link Relations in HTML5
By Virginia DeBolt.
"Several new rel attributes for the <a> and <link> elements have been 
proposed for HTML5. Existing attributes from HTML4 may be redefined 
somewhat. They include..."
http://www.webteacher.ws/2010/04/19/new-link-relations-in-html5/

HTML5 Articles and Sections: What's the Difference?
By Bruce Lawson.
"An article is an independent, stand-alone piece of discrete 
content...Other articles can be nested inside an article...Section, on 
the other hand, isn't 'a self-contained composition in a document, page, 
application, or site and that is intended to be independently 
distributable or reusable'. It's either a way of sectioning a page into 
different subject areas, or sectioning an article into...well, sections..."
http://tinyurl.com/y5qlhy8

Your Questions Answered #7
By Richard Clark.
"Here we are again with another round of patient questions about HTML5. 
In this article, we'll be covering AJAX, the eternal question of <div> 
or <section>, our old friend Internet Explorer, how to mark up multiple 
blocks of content in a sidebar, and using <header>  with <hgroup>."
http://html5doctor.com/your-questions-answered-7/

Should Web Designers be Learning HTML 5?
By Stefan Mischook.
"I am starting to hear that all too familiar nerd-buzz of premature 
excitement - this time it's about HTML 5 and all it's cool new 
capabilities. Yes, HTML 5 does have a lot of cool things it can do, and 
so it's tempting to jump in and start learning. But that would largely 
be a waste of time...at least for now..."
http://tinyurl.com/y2xqgnb

An Introduction to HTML 5 -  Doctype, Header and Nav Elements
By Alejandro Gervasio.
"So what's coming after the current version of HTML? HTML 5, of course. 
Keep reading for a look at what's coming, and how you'll be able to use 
the new elements in your web pages once the specification is finalized 
and browsers begin supporting the new standard. This is the first part 
of a series..."
http://tinyurl.com/y3ddvv3

Timed Tracks
By WHATWG Wiki
"This page contains examples of use cases that user agents are likely to 
be required to support natively in the first version of timed track 
features in HTML."
http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/Timed_tracks

+08: TYPOGRAPHY.

Verdana Pro (and Con)
By Jeffrey Zeldman.
"Although Matthew Carter is overseeing the project and David Berlow of 
The Font Bureau is leading development, I'm feeling twitchy about 
Verdana Pro, a new print family from an old screen face..."
http://www.zeldman.com/2010/04/18/verdana-pro-and-con-2/

+09: USABILITY.

The Decline of the Homepage
By Gerry McGovern.
"More and more customers are going straight to specific pages on your 
website, rather than the homepage."
http://tinyurl.com/yywazr6

Putting a Paper Form Online - Avoiding Dropouts and False Information - 
Applying Aesthetics
By Janet M. Six.
"In this Ask UXmatters column-which is the second in a special, two-part 
series focusing on Web form design and evaluation-our experts discuss 
the following topics: putting a paper form online; avoiding Web form 
dropouts and false information; applying aesthetic styles to Web..." 
forms..."
http://tinyurl.com/y3k5thk

Hidden Information in Twitter Background Images
By Matt Obee.
"...Basically, don't use background images to display information. If 
you feel that you really must provide information in a background image, 
you should at the very least make sure that the same information is 
available (and easy to find) in text, elsewhere. On Twitter, this would 
mean providing the same information either in the bio field, or if 
that's not long enough, on a separate web page linked to from the web 
address field. Don't make things look interactive when they aren't. If 
you include what looks like a button in a background image, people will 
try to push it. If you display a URL or an email address, people will 
click on it or attempt to copy/paste it. It's not because they're 
stupid; they just expect things to work like they normally do."
http://mattobee.com/blog/article/twitter-background-images/

[Section one ends.]

++ SECTION TWO:

+10: 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.]