Friday Feast #9: Accessibility, CSS, Design, Graphics, Information Architecture, Music, Search Engines, Usability, Writing

Fri

MAY

2002

Today’s Friday Feast continues with its eclectic mix of links to fascinating sites. See also previous Friday Feasts.

Web Access @ Fresno State has helpful information, tools, and resources on Web Accessibility, sharing their information on plans and implementation for their site accessibility, including the Section 508 Guidelines. You’ll find explanations of accessibility and the 508 Guidelines, a great Web Accessibility Information Resources section, an online or offline Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool (just type in a URL and see how it does!), and more.

In this week’s WebReference Newsletter Andy King reviews Vincent Flanders' new book Son of Web Pages That Suck. Andy provides an insightful, terrific review of Flanders' new book that’s geared for beginning to intermediate web designers, obviously enjoying Flanders' unique humorous, witty approach to pointing out what not to do in your own sites. Andy also interviews Flanders about his latest book.

MSIE6 bug with floating divs and spacers
05/12/2002 by Raphael Mazoyer for evolt.org. Raphael discusses the bug and a possible fix. See also CodeBitch’s comments and links regarding the IE5 Mac relative-position linespacing bug and more. Helpful insight, information, and ideas.

Jack Yan Takes Note of the Width of the World Wide Web
Fascinating article on the latest trends for website design widths. By Jack Yan, founder of Jack Yan & Associates for Design Interact.

Oooh ... Shiny! Creating editable metallic effects on text in Photoshop
05/16/2002 by David Nagel for Digital Media Designer. Well done, easy-to-understand tutorial teaching the techniques for creating shiny metallic effects and adding a pattern to text (from a photo, in this example) for a variety of possible results. Plenty of screenshots and easy to follow.

Michael Graber Contemplates The Poetics of Information Architecture
Down-to-earth article explains what makes a site work well and why. By Michael Graber for Design Interact.
MyWhine
Weblog - "a glorified bookmark" for information architecture, information management, metadata and taxonomy, user experience design, and more. Weblog by Madonnlisa Chan, Metadata Services Manager at Stanford Graduate School of Business.
relationships
Terrific and simple chart by Christina Wodke, eleganthack.com, showing the correlation among findability, understandability and usability. Good discussion at the site, too.

Apple: Play music at your own risk
By Gwendolyn Mariano, CNET News.com. Copy-protected discs are not standard CDs and thus not meant to be played in Apple’s products, according to Apple’s site, and damage may not be covered by warranty. Huh?!
[hat tip: Zeldman.com]
Bluff City Backsliders
This group’s style: “soulful, spirited, and often very funny sounds that first made Beale Street famous.” The group includes information architect Michael Graber. This music lightened my heart and my spirit. Good listening.
Printable Manuscript Paper
at Linkwaregraphics Music Images. After countless inquiries, I’ve finally created music manuscript paper for printing in a couple of formats and styles. So if you’re interested in writing your own music, feel free to download this standard manuscript paper and print it out as you need it.

Kart00
See how you’re linked via a graphical display of results showing relationships between key web sites and ideas. Especially cool if you have Flash enabled, but an HTML version is also available.
[hat tip: Marylaine Block’s Neat New Stuff on the Net (for May 17, 2002)]

Determining the Best Online Font for Older Adults
By Michael Bernard, Corrina Liao, & Melissa Mills for Usability News. An insightful study done here and one to keep in mind when determining your site’s fonts and sizes.
[hat tip: Meryl’s Notes]