Perhaps you heard the news earlier this week, but if not, Firebug 1.0 was released this past Wednesday. Since Joe Hewitt first announced Firebug in January 2006, he has continued to add features and functionality to this wonderful free Firefox extension.

Debugging and editing HTML, CSS, and JavaScript on a web page in real time has been a great time saver for me. Learn more about Firebug 1.0 from the Yahoo video where Joe explains the new features and functionality. The article in Dr. Dobb’s Journal describes AJAX Debugging with Firebug.

At the January meetup, Dennis Lembree of CheckEngine USA gave a splendid presentation on web accessibility. Topics included the definition of the term, general issues, guidelines and law, and advocates. You can get the web accessibility presentation on the CheckEngine USA web site, which is available in HTML and PDF formats.

As we discussed, and I promised, here’s the list of articles and websites I mentioned during our web accessibility discussion last night:

• Improving Ajax applications for JAWS users - Juicy Studio, Gez Lemon - a great site for best practices and standards
• Firefox, the Little Memory Hog - Robert Nyman - the story I told about Firefox, Internet Explorer and how the Macintosh is no longer invited to IE reunions. It’s another great site highlighting best practices and standards. Robert has several JavaScript libraries available.
• Pure CSS Horizontal Drop Down Menu - TJK Design - Thierry Koblarz - Thierry has several tutorials and articles on his site, and is very active in the CSS discussion list
• The Web Standards Project - this is the site I mentioned that has it’s skip to content link hidden on screen display; it is only displayed by hovering over the top edge of the viewport
• Accessites.org - wonderful site highlighting accessible, usable, and yes, stunning (their words!) websites. A team of well-known web professionals provide reviews and guidelines on the accessiblity of websites. Also, a great list of resources for building and improving your web development skills.
• Functional Accessibility Evaluator - a tool from the University of Illinois that tests individual website pages based on their own list of criteria. Some of their criteria are unusual, and not referenced in other well-known accessibility guidelines.
• Also, Dean mentioned the ESPN move to a web-standards design and the savings in terabytes. Not sure if this is the article Dean was thinking of, but check out the article about ESPN’s cost savings where Eric Meyer is interviewed by Mike Davidson from Newsvine.

I think I’ve listed all the references - if there’s one you remember, and I forgot, let me know.

Just a reminder that tomorrow (the 24th) there will be a meeting at the 3.7 Designs office at 320 S. Main, Ann Arbor, MI 48104. Dennis Lembree will be giving a presentation on web accessibility. There will be networking, latest web news, and refreshments.

News about Microsoft’s release of Outlook 2007 next month, and the fact that the new release breaks HTML rendering, is causing lots of comment from anyone involved with email newsletters.

Instead of using Internet Explorer 7 for rendering HTML, Outlook 2007 will use Microsoft Word’s rendering engine, which we all know produces lovely non-standard compliant HTML. Background images will no longer be supported; neither will forms, floats, and clears.

I know I’ll be spending time with clients in the next month re-working their email newsletter templates to get them to display well in Outlook 2007. Microsoft kindly provides an HTML and CSS validation tool to validate your newsletter in Outlook 2007.

Peter-Paul Koch highlights the new Dutch government guidelines for websites, which will make web professionals involved with web standards smile (it certainly made an impression on me!). By Dutch law, government websites are required to use:

• valid HTML 4.01 or XHTML 1.0
• CSS and semantic HTML and separation of structure and presentation
• progressive enhancement
• the W3C DOM (instead of the old Microsoft document.all)
• meaningful values of class and id
• meaningful alt attributes on all images

Unfortunately, the regulations are only in Dutch, there is no English translation available yet.

Usability expert Jakob Nielsen has released his Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design for 2006. Here’s a summary:

1. Bad Search
2. PDF Files for Online Reading
3. Not Changing the Color of Visited Links
4. Non-Scannable Text
5. Fixed Font Size
6. Page Titles With Low Search Engine Visibility
7. Anything That Looks Like an Advertisement (except text-only)
8. Violating Design Conventions
9. Opening New Browser Windows
10. Not Answering Users’ Questions

Lou Rosenfeld, co-author of the polar bear book, will present “Search Analytics: Diagnosing What Ails Your Site” at the January meeting for the Michigan Usability Professionals Association (MIUPA).

The meeting will be held January 17, 2007 beginning with networking and food at 6PM. The presentation begins at 7PM. More information, and registration details, are available at the MIUPA website.

Here’s a neat blog article on Boagworld, Why Meetups Matter from a couple months ago. Web expert Paul Boag discusses the advantages of web professionals meeting in person periodically. He encourages those in the web industry to attend meetups–not only web designers and developers, but web site owners as well. Paul states:

Unlike conferences, meetups tend to be free or at least very cheap and so there is little excuse not to go…Even if it is only four or five people, it is still a chance to swap war stories and have a drink while you’re at it.

The next Refresh Detroit meet-up will be 6:30pm Wednesday, January 24 at the offices of 3.7Designs in downtown Ann Arbor, Michigan. Dennis Lembree of CheckEngine USA will be presenting on web accessibility. Refreshments will be provided. New visitors are welcome to RSVP by emailing the chapter or just show up!

Map to 3.7Designs
320 S. Main St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48104

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