December 2002 Archive
Powered By Movable Type
Every section of this website is now powered by Movable Type. So I can say goodbye to AtomZ Search (great service) and instead use MT-Search for everything, thus the new search form on the right sidebar. Web Simple ran on Movable Type since inception, but I honestly have no idea how I’m going to handle projects once they appear. And yes, Web Simple and Projects will appear early sometime in 2003, we promise.
Update: The Web Simple project is over.
Mark Pilgrim Takes Us To School… Again
Mark Pilgrim shows us again that many are still learning to walk with HTML. He developed a posts by citation archive that’s auto-generated from posts using the cite tag, reminding us how powerful semantic markup can be.
The Best Present Ever
Mark Pilgrim: “Family: it’s the best present ever.”
User Agent Accessibility Guidelines
The W3C recently recommended the User Agent Accessibility Guidelines 1.0. As ia slasher sh1mmer pointed out, this is a good thing because browsers will be required to meet the recommendations in order to conform with local accessibility laws. Could this mean that IE for Windows will be able to resize fonts sized with pixels sooner than later? We can only hope.
WThRemix Updated
The WThRemix contest information and rules have been updated.
Photo Friday
It’s things like Photo Friday that remind me why I love the Web and give me inspiration to use my digital camera a whole lot more than I have been using it. Thanks to Nick Feder for this simple and fun idea. Now find your camera and start snappin’!
Images Within Heading Tags?
I’ve been thinking about the use of images within heading tags and wondering if it’s semantically correct. The HTML 4.01 Spec says that a heading element “briefly describes the topic of the section it introduces. Heading information may be used by user agents, for example, to construct a table of contents for a document automatically.” But it doesn’t say anything about what a heading should contain. I noticed that Zeldman wraps an h1 tag around an image on The Daily Report, which leads me to believe that it’s okay to do, but the image itself doesn’t contain any text. Only the alt text describes the image as “The Daily Report.”
So there are two basic questions here. First, can headings contain an image? If so, what level of meaning should the image contain?
W3C: The WThRemix
On behalf of WebGraphics, I’m excited to announce a redesign challenge called the WThRemix. The challenge is this: create a redesign of the W3C homepage using valid XHTML and CSS. Check out the full details on the contest site, and then get to it!
Hotbot Redesign and CSS Blunders
I applaud Hotbot for moving to an all XHTML and CSS design, even though it doesn’t quite validate. Douglas Bowman, the standards evalgelist behind the Wired and Hotbot redesign, claims that they’re working on the validation errors, so I can overlook the errors for the time being. Besides, how can I complain about measly validation errors when it boasts cool features like including multiple catalogs, custom search filters, and completely skinnable homepage and search results?
Allowing the user to upload a custom CSS file is a bold but welcome move. I was curious to play with the CSS myself, so I downloaded the CSS file that they provide and immediately noticed some errors that were a little more difficult to overlook.
First things first: comments in CSS are accomplished using C-style comments. That is, comments must be surrounded by /* and */. Using // to precede comments will not work, although it is commonly used in JavaScript and Microsoft specific development environments. Secondly, there is no text-white property in CSS, but I’ll take a wild guess and say they meant to use white-space because it uses the nowrap value.
If you want to create your own CSS for Hotbot, here is the commented CSS that I recommend you start with, free of validation errors and ready to upload.
Buy.com Does Good
When I visited Buy.com the other day to do some Christmas shopping, their website was having some problems serving up the images correctly. So I was happy to see that they took the time to add alt text for most of the meaningful graphics on their site. They still have a way to go before they can claim to have a fully accessible website, but as we learned from the recent Joe Clark interview, having alt text is the single biggest step a site can take to becoming accessible.
Meanwhile Amazon.com, in a sad profit-driven move, only provides alt text for their “Add to Shopping Cart” button and their checkout pages. Their access site, while more accessible than the rest of their site, snubs current accessibility recommendations by being a text-only site and not providing equivalent content. (It doesn’t return the same search results as the regular site.)
Cheers to Buy.com for understanding that accessibility doesn’t mean creating a separate text-only site, but instead using methods that have existed since HTML 2.0.
This Is My Wishlist
This is my wishlist. Don’t even think about buying anything for me.
Zeldman’s Head on Hivelogic
Eerie. I have this feeling that I’m missing an inside joke.
WaSP Asks the W3C
WaSP Asks the W3C: “The project, ‘WaSP Asks the W3C’ involves WaSP Steering Committee members culling questions from supporters and asking members of the W3C’s Quality Assurance Group for insight and details.”
The first article, Specifying Character Encoding, is a useful discussion on how to specify the character encoding for a particular document.
Joe Clark on Slashdot
In classic Joe Clark form, the accessibility curmudgeon answers 10 accessibility questions from the Slashdot community - in valid XHTML. This is an interesting and informative read.
(via WebWord)
Feng Shui for Web Designers
Internet Feng Shui is a design philosophy that I can appreciate:
I thought I’d see what feng shui could tell us about creating appealing and harmonious websites. If the Chinese have found these to be decent design principles for the last 5,000 years, we should at least give them a go.
However, contrary to the author’s opinion, just because Flash encourages curvy images, I’m not sure it’s blessed with positive ch’i.
Can anyone provide some good examples of Feng Shui on the Web?
(via LucDesk)
W3C Redesign Challenge?
After reading k10k’s mschmidt’s remarks on the W3C redesign, Nate Steiner has proposed a W3C homepage redesign challenge. Interested parties are encouraged to add to the discussion.
Advent Calendar 2002
25 reasons why Leslie Harpold rocks:
Hoopla Presents: Advent Calendar 2002. 25 fun filled days of surprises.
(via Harrumph)
Mapping the Userati
Chris McEvoy of Usability Must Die fame and also a frequent contributor to WebWord recently created the Map of Userati Connections. He defines userati as a group of people concerned with issues relating to software and users, who are known to their peers, which includes yours truly. The connections were calculated using Google. So, for example, Chad Thornton has about 8 connections to Don Norman because the search terms “Chad Thornton” and “Don Norman” were found on the same page about 8 times.
(via WebWord)
5 Things To Know About Your Users
Jared Spool wrote an excellent article on user context, 5 Things To Know About Users:
The user’s intentions, context, knowledge, skills, and experience are the essential things that every designer needs to know. Without this, the team is going to design something that seems useful, but they’ll never know if it actually helps the user. The result is exactly what we see with Citibank’s design — a lot of content, but not the right content.
If you’re interested in hearing more from Jared, he’ll be the keynote speaker at User Interface West, March 24 - 27, 2003.
Holy Booklist Batman!
A great list of interaction design/information architecture/usability books is now available on Boxes and Arrows. If you’re going to buy one of these books, please buy it from that page; every purchase will help support Boxes and Arrows. Happy shopping!
Click Here: Meaningless Words
Contrary to what some people think, using “click here” has it’s place on the Web. However, instead of discussing its overuse as an instructional aid for new users, I think it’s more important to emphasize the lack of meaning in “click here.” This is especially relevant for screen reader users who rely on Web authors and editors to write concise and meaningful link text.
13.2 million New HIV Cases Every Day
Recent statistics from UNAIDS show that over 8,000 people die every day from AIDS. But just under 14,000 new cases of HIV infections occur every day.
Imagine for a moment, if there was an epidemic of that size in your community.
Our community is the world, and today is World AIDS Day.
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