RE: [WSG] Video of Screen Reader Use?
This is a wonderful resource Justin. Thank you. Glen Wallis Hi Joseph, These are really great videos from the University of Wisconsin. http://www.doit.wisc.edu/accessibility/video/ I have shown these in a lot of classes and presentations. Sincerely, Justin Thorp
[WSG] Wild metadata
Hi DC-General and the Web Standards Group Here's another half-baked idea that I am trying to straighten out. I would appreciate your feedback and suggestions. This will be my last one for a while, I promise. ** The problem ** On the Web, DC.description and DC.subject are not very effective finding aids when the full text is indexed. ** The solution ** Wild metadata, such as anchor text, blog descriptions and folksonomies may provide better description and subject (or keyword) metadata. ** Example ** !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC -//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd; html xmlns=http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml; xml:lang=en lang=en head link rel=schema.dc href=http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/; / link rel=schema.terms href=http://purl.org/dc/terms/; / link rel=DC.subject href=http://api.search.yahoo.com/WebSearchService/rss/webSearch.xml? appid=yahoosearchwebrssquery=link:http://jod.id.au/tutorial/naked- metadata.html / link rel=DC.subject href=http://del.icio.us/rss/url/e43f0f84e421ed5de166b285eca30468; / link rel=DC.description href=http://www.blogdigger.com/rssLinkSearch.jsp?link=http:// jod.id.au/tutorial/wild-metadata.html / /head body /body /html ** Background ** At the DC-ANZ 2005, David Hawking (Panoptic, CSIRO) convinced me that DC.Description and DC.Subject metadata aren't very useful finding aids when the full text of a Web page is indexed. He showed a comparison of searches based on subject and description metadata versus searches based on anchor text alone, and the anchor text search was just as effective. [1, 2] Aside from Web page authors, lots of people spend time indexing and categorising Web pages. They build links, write blog entries and tag pages in folksonomies. This metadata is wild - it is not crafted or controlled by the agency who created the page. It hasn't been commissioned and it represents a variety of world views. Individually, these pieces of metadata may not be very useful. In numbers, however, the irregularities begin to smooth out and the information may be as good or better than metadata written by a Web page author. The quality will not be as good as trained librarians applying metadata via a standardised system and controlled vocabularies. It will, however, be as good or better than untrained people applying metadata to their own pages. It will also be better than no metadata at all. ** Method ** A rough and ready method consists of finding pages that display anchor text, weblog summaries and folksonomy tags for a given page. Preference is given to pages that provide results in a well-formed XML format, as these assist the harvesting process. * Anchor text * Yahoo! provides a good listing of anchor text terms via their ability to find pages that link to a specified URL. The syntax for Yahoo! is: http://api.search.yahoo.com/WebSearchService/rss/webSearch.xml? appid=yahoosearchwebrssquery=link:http://jod.id.au/tutorial/naked- metadata.html * Weblogs * Weblog search engines like Blogdigger will show blog entries for a given URL. These can be used as descriptions of the page. The format for Blogdigger is: http://www.blogdigger.com/rssLinkSearch.jsp?link=http://jod.id.au/ tutorial/wild-metadata.html * Folksonomies * I could only find one folksonomy (del.icio.us) that had a syntax for searching by URL. Unfortunately, I could not find a simple way to use this syntax. Del.icio.us allocates a unique number to each URL. Therefore, before you can construct a URL, you need to discover what the URL is. + For example, I created the page: http://jod.id.au/tutorial/wild-metadata.html + I then tagged it in Del.icio.us. + I then searched for it in Del.icio.us. + Del.icio.us told me that this URL could be referenced in RDF format at: http://del.icio.us/rss/url/e43f0f84e421ed5de166b285eca30468 ** Harvesting ** It is all well and good to put metadata into a document. You have to be able to get it out again for it to be any use. Both Yahoo! and Del.icio.us provide their results in RSS or Atom format. While this makes the results machine-readable (and machine harvestable), it doesn't make it easy for a mere mortal to read it. I'm not sure if there are DC.metadata harvesters that can parse RSS or Atom feeds as metadata. The possibility exists - I just can't point to an example. ** Advantages ** + Wild metadata adds multiple voices to a metadata record. For example, wild metadata might exist in different languages. + Wild metadata does not cost the Web page author anything, either in terms of time or money. ** Disadvantages ** + New pages will not have any wild metadata. Wild metadata builds over time. + Unpopular pages will not gather much wild metadata. Wild metadata clusters to popular pages. ** References ** [1] David
[WSG] CSS and PHP
H All, I've been having a little bother with validation of my PHP generated pages. I'm new to PHP/mySQL and I'm finding that some peculiar things happen, such as /body and /html appear in the middle of the code. (???) Also, I find that submitting a URL such as: $myurl=testdate.php?houseID=$housenamechangeID=$changeover; causes problems in that the generated pages don't validate: the ampersands seem to confuse the validator. Are these problems common, and is there somewhere I can find advice on such things? Or am I overtired and making a mess of things? Any help gratefully received! -- Best Regards, Bob McClelland Cornwall (UK) www.gwelanmor-internet.co.uk ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
RE: [WSG] hover div fill query
ivanovitch
The demo page is at http://imeet.com.au/aa2/ - it's cut right backto
highlight my problem. Ignore the content, and the site URL
I'm trying to find a way to make blocks of text in a div (item) to
display the hover background for the entire div, and not just the
linked text.
Adding
.item a { display: block; }
to your stylesheet solved it for me (in Firefox anyway, not tested in anything
else)
Patrick
Patrick H. Lauke
Web Editor / University of Salford
http://www.salford.ac.uk
Web Standards Project (WaSP) Accessibility Task Force
http://webstandards.org/
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Re: [WSG] hover div fill query
Thanks for the prompt response, Tim - but your suggestion did not alter the output (in my browser, at least). Sounded plausible, though... Anyone else? On 14/11/05, Tim Burgan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If I remember correctly (others, please correct me if I'm wrong).. Make your links block elements with a height and width. e.g. div.item a ( display: block; height: 100%; width: 100%; } I think that should do the trick.. maybe? Tim ivanovitch wrote: Dear all I've been trying very hard to propel myself into the 21st century and apply web standards and use good CSS as much as possible, but I'm stuck on getting a div to honour a hover state that I am trying to build. Guidance appreciated... The demo page is at http://imeet.com.au/aa2/ - it's cut right backto highlight my problem. Ignore the content, and the site URL I'm trying to find a way to make blocks of text in a div (item) to display the hover background for the entire div, and not just the linked text. I'd also like the hover state to apply to only the divs in question, and not all other linked text. What am I doing wrong? I can do this standing on my head and one hand behind my back using tables, but I'm not going back now. And yes, I've googled myself to death on this one, which is why I'm asking! Thanks in advance. I.K. ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help ** ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help ** ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] CSS and PHP
I'm not clued up on php or mySQL but if you use amersands then you need to display it as such amp; otherwise it wont validate. designer wrote: H All, I've been having a little bother with validation of my PHP generated pages. I'm new to PHP/mySQL and I'm finding that some peculiar things happen, such as /body and /html appear in the middle of the code. (???) Also, I find that submitting a URL such as: $myurl="testdate.php?houseID=$housenamechangeID=$changeover"; causes problems in that the generated pages don't validate: the ampersands seem to confuse the validator. Are these problems common, and is there somewhere I can find advice on such things? Or am I overtired and making a mess of things? Any help gratefully received!
RE: [WSG] CSS and PHP
designer I'm new to PHP/mySQL and I'm finding that some peculiar things happen, such as /body and /html appear in the middle of the code. Difficult to know without seeing a URL and the associated PHP code. Sound like an error in the PHP to me, though... $myurl=testdate.php?houseID=$housenamechangeID=$changeover; causes problems in that the generated pages don't validate: the ampersands seem to confuse the validator. As with any other XHTML, needs to be encoded as amp; $myurl=testdate.php?houseID=$housenameamp;changeID=$changeover; Or am I overtired and making a mess of things? Possibly :) P Patrick H. Lauke Web Editor / University of Salford http://www.salford.ac.uk Web Standards Project (WaSP) Accessibility Task Force http://webstandards.org/ ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] CSS and PHP
Just a quick note that'll help:
In the URL, the special characters (such as ampersands, question marks,
etc) need to be converted to html character entities. You can find
entity codes from:
http://www.ascii.cl/htmlcodes.htm
For example:
ampersand can be #38; or amp;
question mark is #63;
Therefore your code is:
$myurl = 'testdate.php#63;houseID={$housename}#38;changeID={$changeover}';
You can also do this automatically by using the PHP function
htmlspecialchars() [1]
[1] http://php.net/manual/en/function.htmlspecialchars.php
Tim
designer wrote:
$myurl=testdate.php#63;houseID=$housename#38;changeID=$changeover;
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Re: [WSG] CSS and PHP
On Mon, 14 Nov 2005 12:09:42 +, designer wrote: I've been having a little bother with validation of my PHP generated pages. I'm new to PHP/mySQL and I'm finding that some peculiar things happen, such as /body and /html appear in the middle of the code. (???) Also, I find that submitting a URL such as: $myurl=testdate.php?houseID=$housenamechangeID=$changeover; causes problems in that the generated pages don't validate: the ampersands seem to confuse the validator. Are these problems common, and is there somewhere I can find advice on such things? The ampersand problem is very common - basically you need to escape the ampersand to amp; (or one of the other choices). As a raw '', the browser is expecting there to be the rest of a character entity after it. The /body insertion is something else again - there must be a problem in your code, but its probably beyond the scope of this list :( warmly, Lea -- Lea de Groot Elysian Systems - http://elysiansystems.com/ Brisbane, Australia ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] CSS and PHP
Tim Burgan wrote: Just a quick note that'll help: In the URL, the special characters (such as ampersands, question marks, etc) need to be converted to html character entities. Question marks do not need to be converted. Regards -- Bert Doorn, Better Web Design http://www.betterwebdesign.com.au/ Fast-loading, user-friendly websites ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Wild metadata
You might be interested in MKSearch, it searches for DC metadata in the head section of web pages. http://www.mksearch.mkdoc.org/ Regards, Steven C. Perkins At 03:16 AM 11/14/2005, you wrote: Hi DC-General and the Web Standards Group Here's another half-baked idea that I am trying to straighten out. I would appreciate your feedback and suggestions. This will be my last one for a while, I promise. ** The problem ** On the Web, DC.description and DC.subject are not very effective finding aids when the full text is indexed. ** The solution ** Wild metadata, such as anchor text, blog descriptions and folksonomies may provide better description and subject (or keyword) metadata. ** Example ** !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC -//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd; html xmlns=http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml; xml:lang=en lang=en head link rel=schema.dc href=http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/; / link rel=schema.terms href=http://purl.org/dc/terms/; / link rel=DC.subject href=http://api.search.yahoo.com/WebSearchService/rss/webSearch.xml? appid=yahoosearchwebrssquery=link:http://jod.id.au/tutorial/naked- metadata.html / link rel=DC.subject href=http://del.icio.us/rss/url/e43f0f84e421ed5de166b285eca30468; / link rel=DC.description href=http://www.blogdigger.com/rssLinkSearch.jsp?link=http:// jod.id.au/tutorial/wild-metadata.html / /head body /body /html ** Background ** At the DC-ANZ 2005, David Hawking (Panoptic, CSIRO) convinced me that DC.Description and DC.Subject metadata aren't very useful finding aids when the full text of a Web page is indexed. He showed a comparison of searches based on subject and description metadata versus searches based on anchor text alone, and the anchor text search was just as effective. [1, 2] Aside from Web page authors, lots of people spend time indexing and categorising Web pages. They build links, write blog entries and tag pages in folksonomies. This metadata is wild - it is not crafted or controlled by the agency who created the page. It hasn't been commissioned and it represents a variety of world views. Individually, these pieces of metadata may not be very useful. In numbers, however, the irregularities begin to smooth out and the information may be as good or better than metadata written by a Web page author. The quality will not be as good as trained librarians applying metadata via a standardised system and controlled vocabularies. It will, however, be as good or better than untrained people applying metadata to their own pages. It will also be better than no metadata at all. ** Method ** A rough and ready method consists of finding pages that display anchor text, weblog summaries and folksonomy tags for a given page. Preference is given to pages that provide results in a well-formed XML format, as these assist the harvesting process. * Anchor text * Yahoo! provides a good listing of anchor text terms via their ability to find pages that link to a specified URL. The syntax for Yahoo! is: http://api.search.yahoo.com/WebSearchService/rss/webSearch.xml? appid=yahoosearchwebrssquery=link:http://jod.id.au/tutorial/naked- metadata.html * Weblogs * Weblog search engines like Blogdigger will show blog entries for a given URL. These can be used as descriptions of the page. The format for Blogdigger is: http://www.blogdigger.com/rssLinkSearch.jsp?link=http://jod.id.au/ tutorial/wild-metadata.html * Folksonomies * I could only find one folksonomy (del.icio.us) that had a syntax for searching by URL. Unfortunately, I could not find a simple way to use this syntax. Del.icio.us allocates a unique number to each URL. Therefore, before you can construct a URL, you need to discover what the URL is. + For example, I created the page: http://jod.id.au/tutorial/wild-metadata.html + I then tagged it in Del.icio.us. + I then searched for it in Del.icio.us. + Del.icio.us told me that this URL could be referenced in RDF format at: http://del.icio.us/rss/url/e43f0f84e421ed5de166b285eca30468 ** Harvesting ** It is all well and good to put metadata into a document. You have to be able to get it out again for it to be any use. Both Yahoo! and Del.icio.us provide their results in RSS or Atom format. While this makes the results machine-readable (and machine harvestable), it doesn't make it easy for a mere mortal to read it. I'm not sure if there are DC.metadata harvesters that can parse RSS or Atom feeds as metadata. The possibility exists - I just can't point to an example. ** Advantages ** + Wild metadata adds multiple voices to a metadata record. For example, wild metadata might exist in different languages. + Wild metadata does not cost the Web page author anything, either in terms of time or money. ** Disadvantages ** + New pages will not have any wild
[WSG] Design_Time_Lock
This is another Visual Studio .Net designer related question I think, I have had a quick google, but would anyone be willing to back me up that 'Design_Time_Lock' is not a valid html or css attribute. I am sure it is about as valid as'Design_Time_Drag_And_Drop' is but someone on my team insists on placing it in code that is about to leave. tia, Robert [EMAIL PROTECTED] Systems Developer 01875 618 037 Inveresk, a Charles River Company. - This email, its contents and attachments are confidential and may be covered by legal privilege. This email contains information intended only for the person(s) and/or entity named above. The views and opinions expressed are those of the sender and not necessarily those of Charles River Laboratories or its affiliates. Any other distribution, copying, review, use or disclosure is strictly prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please delete this message and any attachments without making a copy and advise the sender by return email - thank you. This mail and any attachments have been scanned for viruses prior to leaving the Charles River Laboratories network. Charles River Laboratories will not be liable for direct, special, indirect or consequential damages arising from alteration of the contents of this message by a third party or as a result of any virus being passed on. For more information on the range of services that we offer, please visit our website at http://www.criver.com ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Design_Time_Lock
Quoting Robert Nicolson [EMAIL PROTECTED]: I have had a quick google, but would anyone be willing to back me up that 'Design_Time_Lock' is not a valid html or css attribute. Hah...but of course it's not valid. If your team grumbles, tell them they're muppets and challenge them to find a reference to 'Design_Time_Lock' or anything else .NET likes to slot into pages in the official W3C specs... -- Patrick H. Lauke __ re·dux (adj.): brought back; returned. used postpositively [latin : re-, re- + dux, leader; see duke.] www.splintered.co.uk | www.photographia.co.uk http://redux.deviantart.com __ Web Standards Project (WaSP) Accessibility Task Force http://webstandards.org/ __ ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] hover div fill query
On 11/14/2005 4:44 AM ivanovitch wrote:
I've been trying very hard to propel myself into the 21st century and
apply web standards and use good CSS as much as possible, but I'm
stuck on getting a div to honour a hover state that I am trying to
build. Guidance appreciated...
The demo page is at http://imeet.com.au/aa2/ - it's cut right backto
highlight my problem. Ignore the content, and the site URL
This did it for me (adding stuff for the a selector and moving the
padding there):
style type=text/css
div.input {border-color: #ccc;border-width: 1px 1px 0px
1px;border-style: solid;}
div.item {border-bottom: #999;border-width: 0 0 1px 0;border-style: dotted;}
#author {font-size: 1.2em;color: #f30;font-weight: bold;}
#comment {font-size: 1.0em;color: #666;}
#timestamp {font-size: 0.9em;color: #999;}
a {
padding: 2px 0px 3px 0px;
display: block;
}
a:link {text-decoration: none;}
a:visited {text-decoration: none;}
a:hover {background: #fc3;color: #fff;}
/style
--
Steve Clason
Web Design and Development
Boulder, Colorado, USA
www.topdogstrategy.com
(303)818-8590
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Re: [WSG] Accessibility: Default placeholders
Geoff Deering wrote: This also leads to another problem, in that if users configure their operating system to a custom scheme, unwittingly the web designer may be indicating to the user that a field may be read only even if it is not grey. How does the designer know whether to use grey or not? They don't. Erm, well, actually, they do :-) http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/ui.html#system-colors :: or at least, they know what color to use... -- Hassan Schroeder - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Webtuitive Design === (+1) 408-938-0567 === http://webtuitive.com dream. code. ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Altering a Valid (X)HTML with DHTML = Is it still REAL LY valid?
It's a tricky one How? If a tree falls in a wood and no-one hears it - does it still make a noise? Well, it is tricky one. It certainly makes some air waves, ... So, kidding aside, invalid is invalid. Except that validity is a concept that can only be applied to documents. Is the document valid? Yes. QED? Nope. It's tricky. Once the document is parsed, the W3C is very clear on the matter: how these data, nodes, etc., are represented in the internal memory structure of the client application is entirely up to the vendors -- and I can pretty well assure you that they all do it differently. However, they must maintain the DOM API, which is designed to work in specific ways. These ways will permit an in-memory structure of nodes and attributes that could only be derived from an invalid document if they were wholly derived from a document; the DOM API permits them, so they are valid internal structures. So, validity cannot be applied to the in-memory document, once parsed. But, of critical importance is that if a variety of vendors do things differently, and the only thing linking them together is the validity of the source document. Straying from the interpretation of that document means you are possibly venturing into areas where the vendors disagree. It's not a validity issue; it's a compatibility issue. And, given the confluence of specs involved (HTML, XML, CSS, DOM), there ought to be plenty of guaranteed-compatible room outside of what would come from valid documents. But staying valid would be easier, I should think, though easier is not always the primary concern. Is it REALLY valid? To sum up my position: it's like asking if a deep blue sky with little puffy clouds if REALLY sweet? Sweet, in this case, has nothing directly to do with sugar, but how we humans react to sugar. Valid is a term that does not directly apply to the in-memory data structure; it is, nevertheless, a helpful and analogous concept to keep in mind. And it helps keep your code sweet. -- Ben Curtis : webwright bivia : a personal web studio http://www.bivia.com v: (818) 507-6613 ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] PNG Question
Only supported in IE 6 with a hack, kind of an ugly one too as it renders the PNG's transparent area with a mid gray until it has finished loading, I guess if it's on a small image it's ok. I've had a lot of luck with PNG Behavior: http://webfx.eae.net/dhtml/pngbehavior/pngbehavior.html It's an .htc, which you may have to configure your server to deliver properly. You assign the behavior to the img elements via your CSS rules. Handles src changes to/from other pngs or non-pngs. (This only works with actual img tags; if you want to affect pngs as your background-image, then you should apply the filter directly in your CSS, and my advice is to make the image the same size as the container it's backgrounding.) I've hacked this a bit, so that the img is visibility:hidden; until the htc loads/runs, avoiding the ghostly gray-background issues. The trick is that you must only do this if JS is running, otherwise you might wind up with a site with no images. (The hack is testing right now -- NRFPT.) -- Ben Curtis : webwright bivia : a personal web studio http://www.bivia.com v: (818) 507-6613 ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] CSS and PHP
Thank you Gentlemen, Very helpful as always! (I mean it!) -- Best Regards, Bob McClelland Cornwall (UK) www.gwelanmor-internet.co.uk ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] hover div fill query
ivanovitch wrote: Thank you: this is a great improvement, but not quite there. I've added the extra declaration as shown, but... This addtion only hovers the text component, not the entire span area. A table cell would go to the ruled edges - it's only a few pixels, I know, but it's important. (and I've not solved the white text on hover, either!). Your two problems are related to the box model (padding) and selector specificity; see: http://webtuitive.com/samples/aa2.html HTH, -- Hassan Schroeder - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Webtuitive Design === (+1) 408-938-0567 === http://webtuitive.com dream. code. ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] hover div fill query
ivanovitch wrote: Thank you: this is a great improvement, but not quite there. I've added the extra declaration as shown, but... This addtion only hovers the text component, not the entire span area. A table cell would go to the ruled edges - it's only a few pixels, I know, but it's important. (and I've not solved the white text on hover, either!). Adding the proposed declarations to your DEMO page works just fine. Are you checking it there, or are you adding the extra CSS to your actual live project, rather than the cut back demo one? If that's the case, you probably have some more rules in your full page that are interfering with the proposed styles. Can you not post the URL to your full page? P -- Patrick H. Lauke __ re·dux (adj.): brought back; returned. used postpositively [latin : re-, re- + dux, leader; see duke.] www.splintered.co.uk | www.photographia.co.uk http://redux.deviantart.com __ Web Standards Project (WaSP) Accessibility Task Force http://webstandards.org/ __ ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] hover div fill query
Nope: it's the demo page that is failing. Might be the browser (I'm using Safari and Firefox at present, and rebuilding my Windows box after a trojan popped in). We're only talking a few pixels: the text does show the hover state, but if I were to use a table cell, the entire cell would show it. At present, the hover finishes at exactly the edge of the text, and not to the div border. Also, haven't licked the white text on hover bit, either - and yes, I can see a conflict with the author/comment/timestamp tags. On 15/11/05, Patrick H. Lauke [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ivanovitch wrote: Thank you: this is a great improvement, but not quite there. I've added the extra declaration as shown, but... This addtion only hovers the text component, not the entire span area. A table cell would go to the ruled edges - it's only a few pixels, I know, but it's important. (and I've not solved the white text on hover, either!). Adding the proposed declarations to your DEMO page works just fine. Are you checking it there, or are you adding the extra CSS to your actual live project, rather than the cut back demo one? If that's the case, you probably have some more rules in your full page that are interfering with the proposed styles. Can you not post the URL to your full page? P -- Patrick H. Lauke __ re·dux (adj.): brought back; returned. used postpositively [latin : re-, re- + dux, leader; see duke.] www.splintered.co.uk | www.photographia.co.uk http://redux.deviantart.com __ Web Standards Project (WaSP) Accessibility Task Force http://webstandards.org/ __ ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help ** ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] hover div fill query
ivanovitch wrote:
Nope: it's the demo page that is failing. Might be the browser (I'm
using Safari and Firefox at present, and rebuilding my Windows box
after a trojan popped in).
We're only talking a few pixels: the text does show the hover state,
but if I were to use a table cell, the entire cell would show it. At
present, the hover finishes at exactly the edge of the text, and not
to the div border.
You have some padding in there, isn't?
Remove padding from div.item {}
Thierry | www.TJKDesign.com
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Re: [WSG] hover div fill query
ivanovitch wrote:
We're only talking a few pixels: the text does show the hover state,
but if I were to use a table cell, the entire cell would show it. At
present, the hover finishes at exactly the edge of the text, and not
to the div border.
Ah, hang on, missed the bit about the white space. Why not just set the
padding on both div.input and div.item to 0, and reapply the padding in
div.item a:link? Also, you don't need the width: 100%; and height: 100%
in the a:link
Something like
div.input {border-color: #ccc;border-width: 1px 1px 0px
1px;border-style: solid;padding: 0;}
div.item {padding: 0;border-bottom: #999;border-width: 0 0 1px
0;border-style: dotted;}
div.item a:link {padding: 5px; text-decoration: none; display: block;
}
--
Patrick H. Lauke
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Re: [WSG] hover div fill query
This is a really brief answer, but should get you started on the right
track to thinking about the C in CSS =)
First, some house work: id must be unique, class can be reused on any
number of elements.
Second, the following demonstrates the use of the cascade - C - to color
the author class:
a:hover .author {color:#fff;}
Create similar rules begninning with a:hover to apply the styles you want
to anything contained within the a element.
kind regards,
Terrence Wood
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Re: [WSG] Wild metadata
Jonathan O'Donnell said: ** The solution ** Wild metadata, such as anchor text, blog descriptions and folksonomies may provide better description and subject (or keyword) metadata. The quality will not be as good as trained librarians applying metadata via a standardised system and controlled vocabularies. It will, however, be as good or better than untrained people applying metadata to their own pages. It will also be better than no metadata at all. You're such a pirate Jonathon =) I love it. The Web 2.0 fans should too. Now all you need to do is package this up as a web service and you've got yourself a web 2.0 company =) kind regards Terrence Wood. ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Accessibility: Default placeholders
Patrick Lauke wrote: Geoff Deering wrote: With all due respects this is the way default graphical user interface on operating systems are designed to function. From page 158 of The Windows Interface Guidelines for Software Design; But we're talking about the design of web sites, not software that should visually integrate with, and adhere to, the OS defaults. It would be very strange indeed if web based user agents did not conform to the programming conventions for software interface guidelines. The minute that happens there is a breakdown in a system to be able to communicate its state clearly with the user, through whatever application or device it is running. This is a web standards based group, and I feel that web standards based developers can gain a deeper appreciation of the work that has gone into these standards if they are more aware of the relationship with the principles of software interface design and the interrelationship of user agents and digital devices. Understanding this, and it's history, can only help. The user agent has a completely interdependent relationship with the OS, its system environment and resources, it actually uses these system resources, where described in markup, and are then placed on the browser canvas as operating system resources (form controls). The people that worked on the various drafts of HTML are well aware of this, because the state of form controls are change via the markup. This shows that markup-user agent-OS have an interdependent relationship via software handles, and that the user agent is requesting the OS to communicate it's state to the user. This has a universal meaning across multiple devices. So I cannot see how your argument applies, to me, it doesn't stand up. A designer should not implement a design element where their design falsely indicates to the user that the form control is in another state than it is actually in. This is misrepresentation of state. This also leads to another problem, in that if users configure their operating system to a custom scheme, unwittingly the web designer may be indicating to the user that a field may be read only even if it is not grey. How does the designer know whether to use grey or not? They don't. All they know is the majority of users probably do not customise this setting. This is why I believe that it is best to not style form controls (or at least minimally) Taking this thought further, they shouldn't style the size, typeface, colour of body text, or any other aspect of the web page either, as it may unwittingly clash with, or go against, user defined settings? No, I'm not saying that at all. That is different than what I have stated. This has to do with a standard way of communicating state in both OS and user agent. The point is that these design standards have reserved meaning, and if the designer does not pay heed to this they may not communicate the correct state of the control to the user. Personally, I still think don't style form controls is far too sweeping a rule to catch certain edge cases. As you said yourself or at least minimally... which is very difficult to quantify, and depends on the specific situation. It may be, I agree with that. My point is, just be aware of this and make sure you do not inadvertently create an unintentional conflict of communication of state of form control because of a lack of awareness this standard way of representing state. Oh well, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this one, P It's a free world, and I do appreciate reading your opinions. - Geoff ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Accessibility: Default placeholders
Hassan Schroeder wrote: Geoff Deering wrote: This also leads to another problem, in that if users configure their operating system to a custom scheme, unwittingly the web designer may be indicating to the user that a field may be read only even if it is not grey. How does the designer know whether to use grey or not? They don't. Erm, well, actually, they do :-) http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/ui.html#system-colors :: or at least, they know what color to use... Yes, thanks for pointing this out. I'd say the system defaults do these anyway, I can't think of anything off hand where you'd need to explicitly declare these, but I guess there possibly are... -- Geoff Deering ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] hover div fill query
Patrick H. Lauke wrote: Ah, hang on, missed the bit about the white space. Why not just set the padding on both div.input and div.item to 0, and reapply the padding in div.item a:link? Also, you don't need the width: 100%; and height: 100% in the a:link The width is not needed, but I believe the height should be equals to 0, 1% or whatever (but *not* 100%), to prevent IE5 from doing some shrink-wrapping. Thierry | www.TJKDesign.com ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] hover div fill query
Tried height adjustments (0, 1, 99%) in Safari, but no dice. It seems as though the padding (needed here) is getting in the way no matter what. I didn't think that the full-width div color would be so tricky. I think that I can work my head around Terence's advice on the text color (Thanks, Terence), but the issue of the div not taking the full color is bothering me. I've also yet to see what transpires in Win/IE - so might ask others to check it out once I'm closer to the final output. On 15/11/05, Thierry Koblentz [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Patrick H. Lauke wrote: Ah, hang on, missed the bit about the white space. Why not just set the padding on both div.input and div.item to 0, and reapply the padding in div.item a:link? Also, you don't need the width: 100%; and height: 100% in the a:link The width is not needed, but I believe the height should be equals to 0, 1% or whatever (but *not* 100%), to prevent IE5 from doing some shrink-wrapping. Thierry | www.TJKDesign.com ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help ** ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] hover div fill query
On 15/11/05, Terrence Wood [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
This is a really brief answer, but should get you started on the right
track to thinking about the C in CSS =)
First, some house work: id must be unique, class can be reused on any
number of elements.
Oops - leftover from the bigger site... Thanks!
Second, the following demonstrates the use of the cascade - C - to color
the author class:
a:hover .author {color:#fff;}
Got it - Thanks again. So simple when you know how, no? Now for the
'div complete fill problem'.
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Re: [WSG] Accessibility: Default placeholders
Geoff Deering wrote: So I cannot see how your argument applies, to me, it doesn't stand up. A designer should not implement a design element where their design falsely indicates to the user that the form control is in another state than it is actually in. This is misrepresentation of state. The interpretation of the state a form control is currently in also depends on the surrounding context. To pick up the earlier don't use grey at all example: that may well be true if the surrounding background is very light, but on a page with a very dark or black background I'd posit that it would not immediately trigger that grey=disabled/read-only association. As a sidenote: it's been a while since I've actually come across any read-only inputs, and can't really think of a scenario in which I'd want to use one (and therefore, maybe I'm not thinking along the same lines - the need to differentiate between writable and read-only inputs?). But basically what I think I'm getting at is: just because there is a chance that designers may not be judicious in their style choices and confuse the user is not a strong enough reason to give a blanket we shouldn't style inputs at all recommendation. It's a free world, and I do appreciate reading your opinions. Ditto, of course :) P -- Patrick H. Lauke __ re·dux (adj.): brought back; returned. used postpositively [latin : re-, re- + dux, leader; see duke.] www.splintered.co.uk | www.photographia.co.uk http://redux.deviantart.com __ Web Standards Project (WaSP) Accessibility Task Force http://webstandards.org/ __ ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] CSS and PHP
designer wrote: H All, I've been having a little bother with validation of my PHP generated pages. I'm new to PHP/mySQL and I'm finding that some peculiar things happen, such as /body and /html appear in the middle of the code. (???) Also, I find that submitting a URL such as: $myurl=testdate.php?houseID=$housenamechangeID=$changeover; A little bit off the beaten track: How about rewriting the URL to something more like housename/changeover?, so it's technologically independent, search engine friendly and validates easier? I'm currently mucking about with this and learning about this, after reading: http://www.w3.org/TR/chips/ http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI Anyone who has done this before have any tips on this? Kat ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Accessibility: Default placeholders
Patrick H. Lauke wrote: Geoff Deering wrote: So I cannot see how your argument applies, to me, it doesn't stand up. A designer should not implement a design element where their design falsely indicates to the user that the form control is in another state than it is actually in. This is misrepresentation of state. The interpretation of the state a form control is currently in also depends on the surrounding context. To pick up the earlier don't use grey at all example: that may well be true if the surrounding background is very light, but on a page with a very dark or black background I'd posit that it would not immediately trigger that grey=disabled/read-only association. As a sidenote: it's been a while since I've actually come across any read-only inputs, and can't really think of a scenario in which I'd want to use one (and therefore, maybe I'm not thinking along the same lines - the need to differentiate between writable and read-only inputs?). But basically what I think I'm getting at is: just because there is a chance that designers may not be judicious in their style choices and confuse the user is not a strong enough reason to give a blanket we shouldn't style inputs at all recommendation. I think you are missing the whole point. You find these types of web environments mostly on intranets. For a lot of people in large organisations, these are primary interfaces they have to work with. To neglect to address this issue correctly could easily impact the integrity of data because the interface is not communicating *state*, because if the designer is unaware of this, and overrides this visual communication of state that the user agent is conveying, with their own arbitrary design implementation, it would be miscommunicating the state of the data. In this case, it would be a major design blunder. -- Geoff ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Accessibility: Default placeholders
Geoff Deering wrote: You find these types of web environments mostly on intranets. For a lot of people in large organisations, these are primary interfaces they have to work with. To neglect to address this issue correctly could easily impact the integrity of data because the interface is not communicating *state*, because if the designer is unaware of this, and overrides this visual communication of state that the user agent is conveying, with their own arbitrary design implementation, it would be miscommunicating the state of the data. In this case, it would be a major design blunder. But is the solution to make a sweeping don't style inputs recommendation, or to actually educate the designers not to just make arbitrary decision, but decisions firmly based on usability (including expected behaviour/presentation of state)? And, assuming that a design has been implemented which does not exactly match OS conventions but is nonetheless clear, understandable and usable, is it not just as valid, as long as the interface design within the pages themselves is consistently applied? -- Patrick H. Lauke __ re·dux (adj.): brought back; returned. used postpositively [latin : re-, re- + dux, leader; see duke.] www.splintered.co.uk | www.photographia.co.uk http://redux.deviantart.com __ Web Standards Project (WaSP) Accessibility Task Force http://webstandards.org/ __ ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Accessibility: Default placeholders
Patrick H. Lauke said: But is the solution to make a sweeping don't style inputs recommendation, or to actually educate the designers not to just make arbitrary decision, but decisions firmly based on usability (including expected behaviour/presentation of state)? Yes, this is indeed the correct approach. kind regards Terrence Wood. ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] hover div fill query
ivanovitch said:
I didn't think that the full-width div color would be so tricky.
Try using the following css:
div.input{border-top: 1px dotted #999;border-right: 1px dotted
#999;border-left: 1px dotted #999;}
div.item {padding: 0;border-bottom: 1px dotted #999;margin: 0px; width:
100%;}
div.item a:link {text-decoration: none; display: block;}
span.author {font-size: 1.2em;color: #f30;font-weight: bold;}
span.comment {font-size: 1.0em;color: #666;}
span.timestamp {font-size: 0.9em;color: #999;}
a:hover .author {color:#fff;}
a:hover .comment {color:#fff;}
a:hover .timestamp {color:#fff;}
a:link {text-decoration: none;padding: 5px;}
a:visited {text-decoration: none;}
a:hover {background: #fc3;color: #fff;}
Works well in FF Mac (haven't had time to x-check)
HTH
Sarah :)
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[WSG] Help with menu
I am having problems with a menu that is similar to the Alistapart's hybrid menu. I can not get the width to be consistantly even with the rest of the site and it is not workig in IE or Opera. It works fine in Firebird. I have been beating my head against this for quite a long time. It seems that absolutely positioned widths do not behave as I expect them. Oi! http://twitch.sharkpork.com/_work/Freedom/ Help me Obi-wan you are my only hope Thanks guys,-- __Bugs are, by definition, necessary. Just ask Microsoft! www.co.sauk.wi.us (Work) www.arionshome.com (Personal) www.freexenon.com (Consulting)__Take Back the Web with Mozilla Fire Fox http://www.getfirefox.comMaking a Commercial Case for Adopting Web Standards http://www.maccaws.org/Web Standards Project http://www.webstandards.org/Web Standards Group http://www.webstandardsgroup.org/Guild of Accessible Web Designers http://www.gawds.org/
Re: [WSG] Help with menu
James O'Neill wrote: I am having problems with a menu that is similar to the Alistapart's hybrid menu. I can not get the width to be consistantly even with the rest of the site and it is not workig in IE or Opera. It works fine in Firebird. I have been beating my head against this for quite a long time. It seems that absolutely positioned widths do not behave as I expect them. Oi! http://twitch.sharkpork.com/_work/Freedom/ Help me Obi-wan you are my only hope Did you give this one a try? http://www.tjkdesign.com/articles/dropdown/demo.asp It is a bit moe accessible. Thierry | www.TJKDesign.com ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] CSS and PHP
Another issue: this may be caused by ussing sessions. When PHP manages sessions using GET queries as opposed to Cookies it might do this to your. What it does is appends PHPSESSION=w/e to the end of your urls, by default the is *not* escaped. There's a way (in php.ini I think) to fix it. Check http://php.net/session for details. Btw, I think talking about server side processing is kind of OT on this list, but if you have any more questions about PHP and such feel free to email me off-list. Alan Trick Bert Doorn wrote: Tim Burgan wrote: Just a quick note that'll help: In the URL, the special characters (such as ampersands, question marks, etc) need to be converted to html character entities. Question marks do not need to be converted. Regards ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Design_Time_Lock
I think thedailywtf.com needs a seperate section for web developers. Btw, googling 'Design_Time_Lock' gives some interesting results. Robert Nicolson wrote: This is another Visual Studio .Net designer related question I think, I have had a quick google, but would anyone be willing to back me up that 'Design_Time_Lock' is not a valid html or css attribute. I am sure it is about as valid as'Design_Time_Drag_And_Drop' is but someone on my team insists on placing it in code that is about to leave. tia, Robert blah blah blah . ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] PNG Question
Terrence Wood wrote: Patrick H. Lauke said: IE does not natively support 24 bit alpha transparency on PNGs without some seriously hacky workarounds. ...which is to say that IE *does* support 8-bit transparency (i.e. same as gif). That is about the only reason to ever use the GIF any more. Apart from that GIF is pretty much useless. Everthing it can do PNG does better. ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Wild metadata
Hi Jonathan, ** The problem ** On the Web, DC.description and DC.subject are not very effective finding aids when the full text is indexed. I'm unclear as to the purpose of your enquiry. My take on what you have outlined is that you're seeking a method of generating metadata records without requiring the author to be involved. If this were the approach taken by the White House, then George W Bush's biography would be assigned the metadata record 'miserable failure'. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3298443.stm The benefit of classification by an authority (someone who knows their field) is that the classification differentiates content. The more specific the classification, the more useful that classification is to a knowledgeable searcher. On the web, broad, common language classification systems are of most value when the subject is unknown. For example, as a new web designer I might search for 'web design'. As my knowledge increases, my search is likely to be become more sophisticated, for example 'CSS floats' or 'IE box-model hack'. It would be helpful to define both 'effective' and 'finding aid'. As search is such a broad topic it would also be productive to establish context. For example, is this a public search or a site specific search? Would metadata records be displayed to the user or factored into the page ranking? Etc. ** The solution ** Wild metadata, such as anchor text, blog descriptions and folksonomies may provide better description and subject (or keyword) metadata. If the author-generated metadata records are displayed as part of a search result records, then they provide a succinct description of the content. As to whether an individual finds metadata record support the locating of content, the method of display, relevance of the metadata records to the search conducted, personal preference, etc also come into play. Link text (i.e. the text used to link to one webpage from another) is already factored in public search engine ranking algorithms, as does the number of incoming links. Trackbacks http://www.motive.co.nz/glossary/trackback.php are an existing method of capitalising on blog comments, as the link text and blurb from referring webpage is embedded on the source webpage. With regard to folksonomies, looking through Technorati's tags http://www.technorati.com/tags/ , content is often classified according to subjective qualities such as 'rant', 'rambling' and 'random'. It is more likely that folksonomies constitute a snapshot of the evolution of language. As a 'fringe' term become socialised it emerges as part of a formal classification system. For example the term 'hack', as it pertains to CSS, has been socialised to the point where it has become meaningful search term. I would go so far as to suggest that public search engines have already implemented a 'wild metadata' approach to generating search results. Perhaps the issue with the value of metadata records lies less with how they are generated and more with how people phrase search queries and use the web. You might find it useful to browse our glossary as it provides further info on search engines, folksonomies, metadata, etc. http://www.motive.co.nz/glossary . Best regards, -- Andy Kirkwood | Creative Director Motive | web.design.integrity http://www.motive.co.nz ph: (04) 3 800 800 fx: (04) 970 9693 mob: 021 369 693 93 Rintoul St, Newtown PO Box 7150, Wellington South, New Zealand ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] PNG Question
Alan Trick wrote: Terrence Wood wrote: ...which is to say that IE *does* support 8-bit transparency (i.e. same as gif). That is about the only reason to ever use the GIF any more. And, as I mentioned, the fact that very old browsers don't know what a PNG is...which is only an issue if you know for sure that a sizeable part of your audience still uses these user agents (e.g. some government or education sites). -- Patrick H. Lauke __ re·dux (adj.): brought back; returned. used postpositively [latin : re-, re- + dux, leader; see duke.] www.splintered.co.uk | www.photographia.co.uk http://redux.deviantart.com __ Web Standards Project (WaSP) Accessibility Task Force http://webstandards.org/ __ ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] CSS and PHP
Hi This has been discussed on the list before but the quick answer to URL's generated by PHP automatically (like its session handler) is to use ini_set(arg_separator.output, amp;);See : http://php.mirrors.ilisys.com.au/manual/en/ini.core.php#ini.arg-separator.outputIf you generate URL's manually using any script then it's up to the developer to insert amp; instead of ..Cheers JamesOn 11/15/05, Alan Trick [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Another issue: this may be caused by ussing sessions. When PHP managessessions using GET queries as opposed to Cookies it might do this toyour. What it does is appends PHPSESSION=w/e to the end of your urls, by default the is *not* escaped. There's a way (in php.ini I think) tofix it. Check http://php.net/session for details.Btw, I think talking about server side processing is kind of OT on this list, but if you have any more questions about PHP and such feel free toemail me off-list.Alan TrickBert Doorn wrote: Tim Burgan wrote: Just a quick note that'll help: In the URL, the special characters (such as ampersands, question marks, etc) need to be converted to html character entities. Question marks do not need to be converted. Regards**The discussion list forhttp://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help**
Re: [WSG] PNG Question
Alan Trick said: ...which is to say that IE *does* support 8-bit transparency (i.e. same as gif). That is about the only reason to ever use the GIF any more. Apart from I meant it supports png with 8-bit transparency. kind regards Terrence Wood. ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Accessibility: Default placeholders
Hi Geoff, (To pick up on Patrick's point.) Have you come across a scenario on a website where it seems appropriate to use an input element to indicate that an option exists but cannot be edited by the user? Perhaps it's preferable to show such content as text rather than as an input? (Seems like an instance of yes, we have no bananas: yes this is an input, but no you can't.) Best regards, -- Andy Kirkwood | Creative Director Motive | web.design.integrity http://www.motive.co.nz ph: (04) 3 800 800 fx: (04) 970 9693 mob: 021 369 693 93 Rintoul St, Newtown PO Box 7150, Wellington South, New Zealand ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
RE: [WSG] Accessibility: Default placeholders
Could be useful depending on the context. For example, if you wanted to show that a field was editable content (within the whole application), but not on the particular screen you are on right now (especially if the user knew that by clicking on edit or some other option they would be able to edit those particular fields.) You could even fine tune this so that if some users were able to edit a limited subset of the fields, they would only be only shown the disabled input for those they would be able to edit. As with the bananas, knowing that a shop usually has them but not today could be useful to someone. Cheers, Rebecca -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Andy Kirkwood, Motive Sent: Tuesday, 15 November 2005 5:20 p.m. To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: Re: [WSG] Accessibility: Default placeholders Hi Geoff, (To pick up on Patrick's point.) Have you come across a scenario on a website where it seems appropriate to use an input element to indicate that an option exists but cannot be edited by the user? Perhaps it's preferable to show such content as text rather than as an input? (Seems like an instance of yes, we have no bananas: yes this is an input, but no you can't.) Best regards, -- Andy Kirkwood | Creative Director Motive | web.design.integrity http://www.motive.co.nz ph: (04) 3 800 800 fx: (04) 970 9693 mob: 021 369 693 93 Rintoul St, Newtown PO Box 7150, Wellington South, New Zealand ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help ** ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Accessibility: Default placeholders
On 15/11/05 3:20 PM, Andy Kirkwood, Motive [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Geoff, (To pick up on Patrick's point.) Have you come across a scenario on a website where it seems appropriate to use an input element to indicate that an option exists but cannot be edited by the user? Perhaps it's preferable to show such content as text rather than as an input? (Seems like an instance of yes, we have no bananas: yes this is an input, but no you can't.) Best regards, I actually used read only input fields recently for our online subject selections. Compulsory subjects were pulled out of a database and displayed as read only input fields, while other fields were normal select elements. Why not just display the compulsory subjects as plain text? Because then there is a visual and cognitive dissonance between the two information sets - they can seem unrelated, especially when you consider that high school students rarely read a web form's accompanying text, no matter how important. I think in this case the fact that the information was displayed with as part of the form avoided that problem, while using the readonly attribute and styling the input text a medium grey took care of the rest. -- Kevin Futter Webmaster, St. Bernard's College http://www.sbc.melb.catholic.edu.au/ ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Accessibility: Default placeholders
Patrick H. Lauke wrote: Geoff Deering wrote: You find these types of web environments mostly on intranets. For a lot of people in large organisations, these are primary interfaces they have to work with. To neglect to address this issue correctly could easily impact the integrity of data because the interface is not communicating *state*, because if the designer is unaware of this, and overrides this visual communication of state that the user agent is conveying, with their own arbitrary design implementation, it would be miscommunicating the state of the data. In this case, it would be a major design blunder. But is the solution to make a sweeping don't style inputs recommendation, or to actually educate the designers not to just make arbitrary decision, but decisions firmly based on usability (including expected behaviour/presentation of state)? And, assuming that a design has been implemented which does not exactly match OS conventions but is nonetheless clear, understandable and usable, is it not just as valid, as long as the interface design within the pages themselves is consistently applied? No, because what you are saying here is a whole heap of criteria that does not address the priority issue, and that is not doing anything by design that will override the user agent visually representing the state of the data (controls) to the user. I'm talking explicitly about misrepresentation of state. -- Geoff Deering ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
[WSG] UDM navigation issues with standards and validity
Hi I need some information on UDM (http://www.udm4.com/) navigation as a web standard navigation. The reason I am looking into this is the need to resolve issues with drop-down menus go behind select field in IE. As some of us knows that there are inherent flaws/problems with IE Window controls like select fields like drop-down list. The standard Suckerfish drop-down menu (which I normally use) or any other CSS-based menus does not work in this situation. Any information or assistance is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance. -- Benson LowEverything is Relative. -Albert E.
[WSG] Label text for search input
Hi, Currently there seem to be a few different approaches (with regional variation) to marking up a simple search form. -Search for [Input field] [Button: Go] -[Input field: Text: Search for...] [Button: Go] -[Input field] [Button: Search] The above approaches seem ok for sighted users. The issue I've come across is when the search form also enables the scope to be limited to a section of a website. In such a case I tend to build more of a composite sentence from the input elements: -Search [Select: Scope/Section names] for [Input field] [Button: Go] The issue is labelling the input field. Although accessibility sites such as WebAim markup the text 'Search' as the label for the input field, 'Search' does not describe the nature of the input? On the WebAim site 'Search' is used as the label for the input field on one search form [1] AND as the label for the search scope on another [2]. [1] http://www.webaim.org [2] http://www.webaim.org/siteindex Compare the relationship between the label and field for another common example: Surname [Input field] Here the user is expected to enter their surname into the field. Perhaps a more appropriate label for the search input field would be 'keyword'? Or is the general consensus that 'Search' is accepted shorthand for 'I want to find...' or 'term to search for'? I'm also attempting to track down some references on how screen readers negotiate (non-Javascript) select elements. Is it preferable to associate a label with the select, or use the first option in the select as the label. Label: Limit search to: [Select menu] or... [Begin select *Limit search to* -Entire website (selected) -Corporate info -Glossary -Guides -News End select] Any screen reader users out there who would like to add their 2 cents/pence/pesos? Best regards, -- Andy Kirkwood | Creative Director Motive | web.design.integrity http://www.motive.co.nz ph: (04) 3 800 800 fx: (04) 970 9693 mob: 021 369 693 93 Rintoul St, Newtown PO Box 7150, Wellington South, New Zealand ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
RE: [WSG] Accessibility: Default placeholders
Hi Rebecca, For example, if you wanted to show that a field was editable content (within the whole application), but not on the particular screen you are on right now (especially if the user knew that by clicking on edit or some other option they would be able to edit those particular fields.) As you mention it would be preferable to indicate this functionality by showing an Edit button next to the (currently uneditable) text. Showing that an option exists but is not currently available is often a technique used in application menus. For example it's important to know that the Copy command can be found in the Edit menu, even when the Copy command is not an available action. The user is able to learn the interface more readily when this approach is taken. However I can't think of a similar situation on a website (if you don't have any bananas then I'm going somewhere else ;). Unless the website is more of a web application. Any examples come to mind? å -- Andy Kirkwood | Creative Director Motive | web.design.integrity http://www.motive.co.nz ph: (04) 3 800 800 fx: (04) 970 9693 mob: 021 369 693 93 Rintoul St, Newtown PO Box 7150, Wellington South, New Zealand ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Accessibility: Default placeholders
Terrence Wood wrote: Patrick H. Lauke said: But is the solution to make a sweeping don't style inputs recommendation, or to actually educate the designers not to just make arbitrary decision, but decisions firmly based on usability (including expected behaviour/presentation of state)? Yes, this is indeed the correct approach. kind regards Terrence Wood. That's a good general rule of thumb. But I am talking about something that is very specific here that is currently being implemented incorrectly, and if general rule of thumb overrides what is a standard primary mode of communication of the true state of the interface, the designer has failed to provide the correct interface. -- Geoff Deering ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Accessibility: Default placeholders
Andy Kirkwood, Motive wrote: Hi Geoff, (To pick up on Patrick's point.) Have you come across a scenario on a website where it seems appropriate to use an input element to indicate that an option exists but cannot be edited by the user? Yes I can (domain registrars). In various states fields are often read only. Also control panels, Webmin, SWAT, etc, workflow in CMSs where you can see certain data but don't have the rights to modify it. Perhaps it's preferable to show such content as text rather than as an input? (Seems like an instance of yes, we have no bananas: yes this is an input, but no you can't.) No, populating form elements is the correct method for displaying such data if there is need for any input. Sure you can render all the content onto the user agent canvas without any form controls. But the minute you put a form element like input there, you are inviting interaction from the user. If you represent that in a way that says to the user this is in a read only state, then of course the user will not regard it as a data field that they can input data. In this instance, form elements are designed to represent the state of the data according to that level of users rights to view, modify and delete. Now it is not the correct use of these that is the issue here. This has been a standard in GUI interface design for a decade and a half or more, and the web inherited these standards, but it seems they really have not been documented properly and web designers have not been educated in these fundamentals. It's not their fault, it's just one thing that has really been overlooked. The problem is that web designers are now implementing designs that convey meaning to form controls, that they are not intending to imply in their design, and I am seeing this spreading at a rapid rate, and before to long, this will degrade the user experience because of purely visual design degrading the inherent meaning of a standard interface between user and form element state. -- Geoff Deering ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Accessibility: Default placeholders
Rebecca Cox wrote: Could be useful depending on the context. For example, if you wanted to show that a field was editable content (within the whole application), but not on the particular screen you are on right now (especially if the user knew that by clicking on edit or some other option they would be able to edit those particular fields.) You could even fine tune this so that if some users were able to edit a limited subset of the fields, they would only be only shown the disabled input for those they would be able to edit. As with the bananas, knowing that a shop usually has them but not today could be useful to someone. Cheers, Rebecca Yes, that's it, in the given context, it has implicit meaning, given the data set it is being applied too. --- Geoff Deering ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Accessibility: Default placeholders
Kevin Futter wrote: On 15/11/05 3:20 PM, Andy Kirkwood, Motive [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Geoff, (To pick up on Patrick's point.) Have you come across a scenario on a website where it seems appropriate to use an input element to indicate that an option exists but cannot be edited by the user? Perhaps it's preferable to show such content as text rather than as an input? (Seems like an instance of yes, we have no bananas: yes this is an input, but no you can't.) Best regards, I actually used read only input fields recently for our online subject selections. Compulsory subjects were pulled out of a database and displayed as read only input fields, while other fields were normal select elements. Why not just display the compulsory subjects as plain text? Because then there is a visual and cognitive dissonance between the two information sets - they can seem unrelated, especially when you consider that high school students rarely read a web form's accompanying text, no matter how important. I think in this case the fact that the information was displayed with as part of the form avoided that problem, while using the readonly attribute and styling the input text a medium grey took care of the rest. What you are saying is completely logical. In some contexts, it would be much better to show the data retrieved in markup that has more semantic value and is more appropriate to styling. The only problem you have here is when you go to the web programmer and suggest your idea (which is a good one), he say Now I have to go and write two sets of markup to address those with purely read only access (no form elements), and those with access rights for modification (requires form elements). If they are generated by different systems from the same data set, as can be the case, then I think that is a better option. But it comes to money, try convincing the web manager, the Ex Director of It and all the rest of them... Good luck. --- Geoff Deering ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Accessibility: Default placeholders
Hi Kevin, Nice example, top marks ;). Sometimes these discussions can get a little abstract and one (real world) example can help make the discussion less murky. Geoff, I understand your pain with regard to traditional (print) designers and the often rocky transition to screen-based design. (Although there's also no guarantee that a developer is any more aware of interface semantics.) By way of confession, back in '97 I coded a form using radio buttons as found them more satisfying aesthetically than checkboxes. Hopefully education or general awareness means that up-and-coming web designer/developers have more of a community to draw on. I often think the root cause of many issues with website usability come down to the mock-it-up-in-Photoshop-then-hand-it-over-to-the-tech-people-to-be-built approach. Ideally there would be meaningful dialogue between the brand/visual and the interface/usability. I actually used read only input fields recently for our online subject selections. Compulsory subjects were pulled out of a database and displayed as read only input fields, while other fields were normal select elements. Why not just display the compulsory subjects as plain text? Because then there is a visual and cognitive dissonance between the two information sets - they can seem unrelated, especially when you consider that high school students rarely read a web form's accompanying text, no matter how important. I think in this case the fact that the information was displayed with as part of the form avoided that problem, while using the readonly attribute and styling the input text a medium grey took care of the rest. Cheers, -- Andy Kirkwood | Creative Director Motive | web.design.integrity http://www.motive.co.nz ph: (04) 3 800 800 fx: (04) 970 9693 mob: 021 369 693 93 Rintoul St, Newtown PO Box 7150, Wellington South, New Zealand ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
