RE: [WSG] making money out of web standards
1) Designers, how would YOU approach selling this concept? Or would you? Here's my take as a designer/IA/coder who works in a similar market space to you: Sell the aesthetics, functionality and usability of the product. This is what makes your solution intelligent and different from the competition. Standards are just the means of executing the solution, like FrontPage, except good not evil. The point is, it's just a tool. The right tool for the job. If anything, you sell standards as something others aren't doing. Reaching the widest possible audience, coding efficiently saving bandwidth and offering greater long-term time cost-saving benefits along with all the other real-world benefits of standards are factors that will show you take the time and effort to do the job right, but I wouldn't make it my unique selling point. After all, our job here is to encourage everyone to produce sites using standards, so one of these days (hopefully) standards will just be... standard. If Singapore is anything like Australia, there's that whole legal angle too. If the site offers a service and is inaccessible, there can be costly legal issues. hank - http://henrytapia.com -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Wong Chin Shin Sent: Wednesday, 29 December 2004 4:09 PM To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: [WSG] making money out of web standards Hi, In Singapore, web design as a profession has gotten a bad rep over the past few years. The barriers to entry aren't exactly high and the fact is as long as someone has a pirated copy of Dreamweaver, (ye gods) Frontpage, Photoshop and a half-assed grasp of how to use them would be able to thrash out something that's acceptable to clients. Myself, I grew disillusioned with the rates and limits on creativity that we were getting about 3 years ago. Imagine your employer offering a template-based website to multiple clients at S$500 for 10 pages and you get a pretty good idea of the lengths you have to go to so that the budget isn't broken. My then-employer didn't value creative personnel highly either so he refused to employ a graphics designer and for a long time, I had to outsource design work at cutthroat prices for a single PSD template document. Needless to say, I'm not proud of my work from that period and I actively avoided doing websites for a while. After a 2 year hiatus, I am honestly feeling good about web design again. Separating content and layout made perfect sense to me as a programmer. XML/XSLT is good 'cos it allows me to modularize sections of a site without having to resort to server-side technologies. CSS is great, just great. But the best thing for me so far, is that after looking through most of the major corporate and government websites in Singapore and the South East Asia region, nobody's doing it yet. That's right, we're far away from standards utopia as yet but where there's room for change, there's money to be made in my book. I've been spending the past half year learning up on standards-compliance but one thing still stands out: how to market it. In US and Australia, there're a growing number of web design outfits using compliance as a marketing tool. They include: 1) http://www.stopdesign.com 2) http://www.simplebits.com/ 3) http://pixelplain.com/ Problem is though that when I read through the literature on those sites, it seems that they might appeal to MIS managers who have an eye on bandwidth costs but to a small and medium sized enterprise (SME) owner? Bandwidth would have nearly no bearing on their decision as they would hardly go beyond the allocated bandwidth of a cheap hosting package. Neither would accessibility unless you're selling Braille e-books. To this breed of decision makers, IE *IS* the web so telling them you intend to fix this would brand yourself in the same category as a Linux-zealot hippie almost immediately (not that I'm not, but I'm having my marketing cap on right now). So, I would like to solicit some feedback on how exactly would you market a standards-compliant approach to website design. My take on this: 1) Choose the right firms to sell it to. SMEs may not be the right people 'cos accessibility and HTML download sizes are not a priority. Government and major retail sites would be good. 2) Choose the right person in the target client to sell it to. A general manager would not bother with background technologies as much as an MIS manager. 3) Judicious use of catch-phrases. I love Firefox, I really do, but I would be wary of dropping the name on a potential client as the last thing they need is the impression that they need to install yet another software. I already have problems getting graphic designers to install it. Thanks to the mass media however, the words XML-compliant has much better connotations. 4) Hard data. For practice, I've been taking
RE: [WSG] an even more amazing css zen garden entry
Now there were some people on-list who thought the last Zen Garden entry I posted lacked a certain wow factor. Well, how about this entry which seems to have it all... Style... Class... Wow... and lots of animation! http://brucelawson.co.uk/zengarden.htm NOW YOU'RE TALKING my language Russ! Happy New Year all hank - http://henrytapia.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] Careers in web standards
Forgive me if I am mistaken, but isn't Accessibility one of the cornerstones of the whole concept of Web Standards? Thus, you can have Accessibility, and be an Accessibility specialist, without Standards (as unlikely as that might be), but you cannot profess Standards expertise without having good knowledge of Accessibility. Accessibility is one major component of the holistic philosophy that is Web Standards. I shall now sit under the bodhi tree and ponder if there really is a universe outside Standards. - Original Message - From: Mordechai Peller [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, November 25, 2004 6:10 PM Subject: Re: [WSG] Careers in web standards Natalie Buxton wrote: While Web Standards and Accessibility are often practiced together, they are not entirely the same speciallty. While that's technically true, it's not a coincidence that those interested in Standards are also interested in accessibility: the two complements each other very naturally. Having a good understanding of both is excellent, but I think Accessibillity will get picked up faster, due to the fines you mention. To promote accessibility without Standards is almost foolhardy. Though I'm sure there are exceptions, they would be exceptions which prove the rule. Of course, working within Web Standards greatly enhances accessibility options. Hence the marriage. If anything, accessibility needs Standards more than Standards needs accessibility. Also, improved accessibility is one of the selling points of Standards. ** 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] Solved-sort of-- This is really strange stuff, even for IE
Hi Ted, Sorry to be late with this response, but I'd encountered this problem in the last two weeks at work. I've written some documentation for it at work, but really the best reference is from PiE: http://www.positioniseverything.net/explorer/dup-characters.html This behaviour, dubbed the Explorer 6 duplicate character bug usually appears when a non-floated element wraps around multiple floated elements and seems to be triggered by HTML comments and/or elements set to display: none. Weirdness! Fixes that worked for me are applying the holly hack (height 1%) to non-floated elements and adding margin-right: -3px to left floated elements (the opposite for right-floated elements), for IE6 only. Again, messy hacks galore to make IE play ball. Take it or leave it. Regards, hank -- http://henrytapia.com/ -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Ted Drake Sent: Saturday, 20 November 2004 10:31 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [WSG] Solved-sort of-- This is really strange stuff, even for IE Hey everyone I've been hacking away at this all day, the strange ghost words. I finally came up with a holly hack to make it a bit better. Here's what I was coming across. I have a series of titles/inputs that are very similar and play well. Then, there is one with a longer title and it wraps. Next, I have one long title (ages of travelers) that should stretch across the left nav. I found that I needed to put an empty div with a class to clear the floating above it. After this longer title, there are a series of ten smaller inputs (ages) that should float against each other to create two rows of five inputs. Unfortunately, the age inputs wanted to skip the age input label and rest against the title above it, which was taller than its input, due to the text wrapping. Does this make sense so far? here's a page to look at: http://www.csavg40.com/csa/sitemap-cheap-travel-insurance.do So, the solution that I found was the holly hack to give the labels a height:1% for IE and to hide it from IE5.5. This made the age boxes stay below the age input title and the text is no longer ghosted. If you look at the above link, you will see the bad text for about an hour and I will probably upload the fixed pages before I leave tonight. Ted ** 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] Font size
Points about allowing the user as much text size control as possible are well made and I agree, however I don't think I'd have a job as a designer if I relied upon the average user to change their browser's default text-size manually. In my several years working on the web, and as a user prior to that, I've never witnessed that behaviour, even amongst savvy users (text-zooming yes, adjusting browser default text-size, no). hank - Original Message - From: Michael Wilson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, November 19, 2004 2:07 AM Subject: Re: [WSG] Font size Hi, Felix Miata wrote: It is arrogant to impose it, rather than merely wish it. What you are doing is saying to your visitors I can't actually know what your default is, but regardless what it really is, it's too big for me, and I'm imposing a xx% reduction from whatever you chose as most appropriate for yourself, whether your default is 9px, or 90px or anything in between. Perhaps it is a bit arrogant for a designer or developer to decide for the user which font-size is most suitable, but design requires that choices be made. Otherwise, we should simply abandon all forms of content styling and rely entirely upon the user to assert their styling desires via whatever means are available to them. We consistently make choices for the user that we feel will improve the user's experience. In many cases we specify font-face, line-height, letter-spacing, color, background-color, emphasis, strength, paragraph width, text effects, and heading levels. All of these choices impact readability and they each alter the user's default settings to some extent. For example, the page you provided earlier (http://members.ij.net/mrmazda/auth/defaultsize.html) is a prime example of how the author simultaneously champions and ignores the importance of the user's preferences. To my eyes, the page is far more readable unstyled than when the font-color, background-color, headings, and font-face are altered to suit the authors idea of pleasant. The font-size seems to have the least impact on how easy or difficult the document is to read, but is the main focus of the information. The web is about control, but not the designer's, it is the user's control that is central to the design and philosophy of the web. John Allsopp at http://webstandardsgroup.org/features/john-allsopp.cfm This particular page sets the font-size for paragraphs and list to 80%, so I don't think this is the best supporting argument for your point. In fact, most of the elements on this page are altered to be either larger or smaller than my default settings. I do, however, have control, which is the key factor of the equation. Still, the average user may or may not know how to exercise this control, so it is evident the issue extends beyond designers and developers and ventures into the realm of user interface and education. -- Best regards, Michael Wilson ** 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] Site-Check:
Hey Kristof, First up, it's looking clean, smart and fresh. Just some points that immediately spring to mind: - Nav: hard to read white text on light blue button background - List of links on the left: on IE/Win the buttons don't behave as you'd expect unless you hover over the text specifically. IMO the whole button should be 'hot'. Try setting the likks to display:block? - the Select a Club select menu is inaccessible. Under IE, if you try to use the select list by keyboard, it becomes very tedious very quickly. Also consider putting a label element around 'Fast Clubber' as well as a go button (or at least some cleverer javascript). - Consider using CSS rather than images for the red and blue button areas at the bottom left. It's hard enough to read as is. Good luck and hope it goes well... Regards, hank http://henrytapia.com/ - Original Message - From: Kristof Rutten [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, November 17, 2004 11:54 AM Subject: [WSG] Site-Check: Hi WSG members, I've been working on my first -total webstandards- project for some time now. It's enteing it's final stage, now only content has to be applied to it. Would you be so kind to do a little site-check to see if it all works out ? I've tested it so far in Safari/Firefox/Camino/Firefox on PC/IE on PC and I see no problems. But hey ;) I've tried to be as compliant as possible. Only have to recorde the contact forms, the app I uses produces crappy 4.01 html code. Tables for forms .. brr .. Anyway : The url - http://www.sportopolis.be Regards, Kristof ** 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] RE: Image replacement techniques for linked elements
RE: [WSG] RE: Image replacement techniques for linked elementsHi guys, I've done this on one of our new websites (text changed to make more sense in this context), and it works quite well with images turned off or on. Or am I missing the point of image replacement techniques? I'm no expert and haven't been doing XHTML/CSS/standards for very long, but my take on this is that the idea of CSS image replacement is so the text in the image still appears in the source, ie. it still is accessible and understood by search engines, screen-readers, etc. People have come up with several techniques for this, generally by setting a background image on the element and somehow hiding the text, via the CSS. A good listing of various techniques is here: http://www.mezzoblue.com/tests/revised-image-replacement/ (redesigned, yay!) I tend to use the Leahy-Langridge method, which involves setting the background image then padding the text out of the viewable area of the element (with overflow set to hidden). This seems to work pretty well with hyperlinked elements without adjustments to your markup, but unfortunately doesn't address the issue of images being turned off when CSS is left on, and it utilises a box-model hack. I'm interested in what the opinion on this is here - or perhaps it's been discussed at length previously? Cheers, hank - Original Message - From: Peter Ottery To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Sent: Monday, August 16, 2004 11:18 AM Subject: RE: [WSG] RE: Image replacement techniques for linked elements James wrote: I have my minimum font-size set to 12px, so websites can't set text I can't read (or see for that matter) - like 6px :D. I think this is rendering your (ed: smh.com.au) plain text headers to be 12px - and they are appearing over the image headers on the smh.com.au home page ... making both types of headers unreadable. GOLD medal to James in the advanced font setting relay! :D you are the 1st person *ever* to pick that up. seriously tho, cheers for that, a valid point indeed, and noted. James then wrote: I've done this on one of our new websites (text changed to make more sense in this context), and it works quite well with images turned off or on. Or am I missing the point of image replacement techniques? h1a href=/sport/ title=link to the sport page img src=/images/imagethatsayssport.png height=60 width=470 alt=sport / /a/h1 nah i dont think yr missing the point. looks like a solid method. The major benefit for us at present for the method we used is the lower strain on the server. ie: having the image as a background image that is part of the sprite image and called once, used repeatedly for a bunch of other images, and eases the load on the servers a fair bit. Can someone out there in accessibility guru land tell us if an image (only) used as a h1 heading is as good as regular text used as a h1 heading? ie: does the alt text on the image (in James' example above) become the defacto heading and get used in the methods the screenreaders use to scan headings on a page? At the WSG meet earlier in the year that David Woodbridge from the Royal Blind Society came to and demo'd that shortcut used that popped up a box with all the headings on the page listed... just wondering if an img's alt text would show up in that list - and other similar scenarios/readers...? James wrote: not sure how it works with search engines i dont know if anyone would know for sure (other than the search engines themselves). Google reads alt text on images - but whether it finds that alt text within a h1 tag and then assumes that's the heading and applies the same points to it when the googlebot scans the page is another thing... pete :) ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ Proud presenters of Web Essentials 04 http://we04.com/ Web standards, accessibility, inspiration, knowledge To be held in Sydney, September 30 and October 1, 2004 See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
