RE: [WSG] Re: Use of Fieldsets other than in form?

[Patrick Lauke]

> Nick Gleitzman

> Forgot this point: valid doesn't mean correct, or sensible. 
> It's really 
> easy to write code that validates, but which is semantic rubbish. The 
> Validator is a great tool for checking the correctness of markup, but 
> it can't interpret context - it's just a dumb piece of software.

Validation is akin to a word processor's spellchecker: it can tell you if you 
spelt everything correctly, but that doesn't mean that the resulting document 
actually makes any sense whatsoever...

P

Patrick H. Lauke
Web Editor
External Relations Division
University of Salford
Room 113, Faraday House
Salford, Greater Manchester
M5 4WT
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RE: [WSG] Re: Use of Fieldsets other than in form?

[Patrick Lauke]

> Lucien Stals

> For a comparison, the w3schools site defines fieldset as "The fieldset
> element draws a box around its containing elements." And that's the
> complete sentence. Note no mention of form controls.
> 
> I leave it to others to debate the authority of the w3schools 
> site, and
> it's a debate worth having.

No need to debate it...w3schools is a cr*ppy resource, full stop. The 
definition of theirs that you quoted above is a case in point...they define an 
element by its visual effect? I haven't checked the site, can't be bothered, 
but I wouldn't be surprised if for  they say "it indents text"...

> But I am a pragmatic 
> coder and if
> I wish to group thematically related elements (*not* necessarily form
> controls), then I'm free to use the fieldset if I wish to. Sure a DIV
> would work. But a DIV is void of semantic. It's the refuge of the
> unimaginative who want to wrap everything in excess tags with no
> semantic meaning just to hang CSS off.

"The DIV and SPAN elements, in conjunction with the id and class attributes, 
offer a generic mechanism for *adding structure* to documents."

Divining hidden meaning from the HTML specifications, conveniently ignoring 
certain parts of the descriptions, and then intimating "I'm sure this is what 
the W3C *meant* to say" is the refuge of...?

P

Patrick H. Lauke
Web Editor
External Relations Division
University of Salford
Room 113, Faraday House
Salford, Greater Manchester
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RE: [WSG] Investigating the proposed alt attribute recommendations in HTML 5

[Patrick Lauke]

> Alastair Campbell

> Does the HTML working group have to take into account 
> accessibility guidelines?
> 
> What I mean is, does it have to make alt mandatory because WCAG (any
> version) does?

I don't think HTML5 is expected to be rolled out until 5 years or so. In that 
sense, WCAG 1 would probably not apply anymore, and because of WCAG 2's tech 
agnostic approach in the normative document it wouldn't be a problem (it would 
only require a new techniques document for HTML5).

P

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] lack of 'lang' attribute fails WAI

[Patrick Lauke]

> Tee G. Peng

> I am working on a bilingual site (chinese/english) that needs 
> to pass  
> at least WCAG AA, the site is UTF-8 charset and I didn't use lang  
> attribute in the meta because it's a bilingual site.
[...]
> What do you propose I should do to make the 'failure' goes away?

Is every page on your site in both chinese and english, all in one page? If so, 
as long as you're marking up the changes when you move from the chinese to the 
english section of your page, I'd say you can pick one or the other as the 
"nominal" language for the whole page.

P

Patrick H. Lauke
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University of Salford
Room 113, Faraday House
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RE: [WSG] Speaking of alt tags . . .

[Patrick Lauke]

> Tee G. Peng

> Hmmm, I didn't think about that. My clients asked me how to add  
> *decorative* images by themselves, I asked are they any meaning/ 
> purpose of those images, are they echo to your content, they said no  
> I just wanted my page looks nice in certain area. I told them sorry  
> you can't do that, because if it's decorative purposes I 
> already took  
> care of it in the CSS.

For small/medium sites, it may be possible that you've already catered for all 
decorative situations in your CSS. But if your CMS solution is far more 
generic, and you need to accommodate for a wide variety of content pages, all 
with different decorative needs that may not be known from the start, this may 
not always be the case.

> I guess this is just how one interprets 'decorative' :)

I don't think we're in disagreement here. Just that I'm thinking of far more 
generic CMS deployments on large scale sites.

P

Patrick H. Lauke
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Room 113, Faraday House
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RE: XHTML/HTML/Standards Conformance was Re: [WSG] Accessible - Standard Compliant - Club Membership System

[Patrick Lauke]

> Marghanita da Cruz

> While exploring the standards compliance/XHTML/HTML issue,
> I  was surprised by the variation in the display of Alt text.
> On the small sample, the XHTML/HTML did not seem to make a 
> jot of difference.
> 
> The screen shots are available at
> 

I'm not quite sure what correlation you're trying to find here...the doctype an 
author uses and the default behaviour of browsers should be two completely 
separate things.

P

Patrick H. Lauke
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Room 113, Faraday House
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RE: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Patrick Lauke]

If you're doing business in a country (as in your company has offices and/or 
stores in that country), that country's legislation applies.
 
P




From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Chris 
Wilson
Sent: 03 October 2007 23:58
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: Re: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard



Those are all well and good, but utterly useless in a global 
marketplace. Should I be under your countries guidelines? Mine? What if I'm 
international? All of them? What if country As guidelines are incompatible with 
country Bs... Or should legislation hinge on guidelines proposed, created, and 
managed by a non government body (WSG)?

You are all so quick to support legislation, but do you have any 
concept of how that would change the web, a concept not just of the 
accesability impact but the real impact? 





On 10/3/07, russ - maxdesign <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: 

> Which idea of accessability should be imposed? Yours? Mine?

There are clearly defined "ideas" of accessibility for most 
countries - such
as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0:
http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/

Or Section 508 in the case of America:
http://www.section508.gov/

In Australia, for example, web accessibility hinges on the 
Disability Act of 
1992
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/dda1992264/

And is backed up by HEREOC's "World Wide Web Access: Disability 
Discrimination Act Advisory Notes":

http://www.hreoc.gov.au/disability_rights/standards/www_3/www_3.html#s3_3

"In June 2000, the Online Council, representing the 
Commonwealth and all 
State and Territory governments, agreed that the Worldwide Web 
Consortium's
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 will be the common 
best practice
standard for all Australian government websites."

All this will change soon when WCAG2 hits the stands  :)

Thanks
Russ





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RE: A: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Patrick Lauke]

> Jermayn Parker

> 1992
> that is 15 years ago :shock:
> surely its time for a new updated version that includes up to date web
> version of rules etc.
> 
> If you want businesses and websites to follow these standards 
> they need
> to be update

Because, you know...they've simply been ignoring 15 year old guidelines because 
they felt they didn't apply to them anymore...
They're probably avidly reviewing the current final stages of WCAG 2.0 and 
simply biding their time until it becomes an official W3C recommendation. Oh, 
even if they did, though, the issue of ALT attributes hasn't changed in the new 
version either...maybe they're holding out for 3.0?

P

Patrick H. Lauke
Web Editor
Enterprise & Development
University of Salford
Room 113, Faraday House
Salford, Greater Manchester
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RE: [WSG] Target Lawsuit - Please Make Yourself Heard

[Patrick Lauke]

> Julie Romanowski

> Please visit Michelle Malkin's site and post your comments -
> http://michellemalkin.com/2007/10/03/blind-shoppers-get-green-
> light-to-s
> ue-target-over-website/.

It's reassuring to see the exact same idiotic views still being bandied around, 
most of them along the "the web is visual" and "what next? blind people suing X"

I'm not even going to jump into the fray this time around, as there's nothing 
new from when the lawsuit story first broke 
http://brucelawson.co.uk/index.php/2006/the-webdev-communitys-response-to-the-target-lawsuit/

P

Patrick H. Lauke
Web Editor
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University of Salford
Room 113, Faraday House
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RE: [WSG] Cost of Accessibility

[Patrick Lauke]

Ok everybody...welcome to the *Web Standards Group* mailing list, where we 
discuss *Web Standards*. For discussions on history, sociology, politics, law, 
morals, capitalism, communism, etc, I'm sure there are other places...
 
For those who don't think the DDA and ADA should apply in certain situations, 
and that certain decisions by judges are wrong, take it up with your 
congressman / councillor / equivalent to get legislation changed. No point 
moaning about it here. IANAL, YANAL, and this isn't a legal mailing list.
 
P

Patrick H. Lauke
Web Editor
Enterprise & Development
University of Salford
Room 113, Faraday House
Salford, Greater Manchester
M5 4WT
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T +44 (0) 161 295 4779
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RE: [WSG] Cost of Accessibility

[Patrick Lauke]

> Gary Barber

> Why bother taking the time to make something that is good 
> quality when 
> at the end of the day the client just wants cheap and functional and 
> looks nice.  

Professionalism?

> So the client says "Why should I use you with your standards and 
> accessibility,  Cowboy Design Joe here is half the cost and looks the 
> same, same Google ranking".

I find that building stuff with standards has dramatically reduced my 
development time, which in turn reflects quite favourably to the cost I can 
quote when doing my occasional bits of freelance. Of course, at the same time 
I'm also quite picky as to which projects I take...and if the initial 
discussion with a client already starts off with something like "that guy can 
do it cheaper", then that's not the kind of client I want/need (as in the long 
run, they'll ALWAYS be more trouble than they're worth).

IMHO, of course.

P

Patrick H. Lauke
Web Editor
Enterprise & Development
University of Salford
Room 113, Faraday House
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RE: [WSG] Cost of Accessibility

[Patrick Lauke]

> And here's me thinking that WCAG 1.0  _WAS_ a web standard !?

Guideline, not standard.

P

Patrick H. Lauke
Web Editor
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RE: [WSG] Encoded mailto links

[Patrick Lauke]

> Rick Lecoat

> Is there a way out what seems, to my inexperienced eyes, like 
> a catch-22
> situation?

Fix your spam issues at the mail server + mail client end, not at the web page 
end, would be my advice.

P

Patrick H. Lauke
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RE: [WSG] Encoded mailto links

[Patrick Lauke]

Because you can't detect when a screen reader is there or not...
 


From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Or Golan
Sent: 17 October 2007 15:33
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: Re: [WSG] Encoded mailto links



Why not simply display the email address as a simple mailto only when 
the browser is a screen reader? 


On 10/17/07, Rick Lecoat < [EMAIL PROTECTED]  
> wrote: 

On 17/10/07 (14:16) Patrick said:

>Fix your spam issues at the mail server + mail client end, not 
at the 
>web page end, would be my advice.

David said:
>I, long ago, gave up trying. Methods are either highly 
ineffective,
>or block out users you want as well as spam bots. I take the 
view
>that email addresses are going to end up on spam lists 
eventually no 
>matter what I do, and just run spam filtering software.

So the general consensus would seem to be "forgeddabowdit".
I wondered if that would be the result, but I'm surprised that 
there
isn't a workaround -- only because almost everything else that 
I thought 
would be impossible some clever person has found a way to do.

To join with Andrew Maben, however, I'd be curious to know 
whether
spambots decode encoded entity text, eg:

'user'
becomes 
'user'

(ignore quote marks).


I assume that they can read them perfectly easily -- browsers 
can, after
all -- but it'd be good to know for sure.
Same question for screen readers. 

--
Rick Lecoat




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RE: [WSG] Encoded mailto links

[Patrick Lauke]

> Rick Lecoat

> To join with Andrew Maben, however, I'd be curious to know whether
> spambots decode encoded entity text, eg:
> 
> 'user' 
> becomes 
> 'user' 
> 
> (ignore quote marks). 
> 
> 
> I assume that they can read them perfectly easily -- browsers 
> can, after
> all -- but it'd be good to know for sure.
> Same question for screen readers.

All that would take for a spambot is to do a two-pass: replace all encoded 
entities, then scan the result for email-address-like patterns. Trivial. And 
once an email address is harvested by one bot, it's likely to end up on lists 
that are then sold and shared around...so even if not all spambots will bother 
with a two-pass, it's not a safe way to go about things...and I'd say it's more 
trouble than it's worth (makes editing the page a pain for non-techie users, 
for instance).

P

Patrick H. Lauke
Web Editor
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University of Salford
Room 113, Faraday House
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RE: [WSG] Encoded mailto links

[Patrick Lauke]

> Rick Lecoat

> If you are talking about actually hiding markup from certain agent
> types, I'd certainly like to know your method.

Screen readers run on top of normal browsers like IE of Firefox, so 
user-agent-wise you won't be able to really distinguish them. You *may* be able 
to catch some specialised talking browsers, but who uses those nowadays?

P

Patrick H. Lauke
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RE: [WSG] how a href with javascript pass in A level

[Patrick Lauke]

> Gaspar

> I think this should get a manual check or warning.

You should ALWAYS do human checks of whatever an automated validation tools 
tells you, unless it's something purely technical (e.g. does markup validate to 
spec).

P

Patrick H. Lauke
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RE: [WSG] Appropriate use of the ABBR tag and Roman Numerals

[Patrick Lauke]

> Matthew Pennell

> It's not an abbreviated form of the full date by any stretch of the 
> imagination.

Tell that to the microformats crowd - they've practically stretched the idea of 
"abbreviation" to anything, just so they can fit their machine readable data 
into the page...

> Why not just use a span (or whatever other tag is convenient): 
[...]
> Functionally it's exactly the same as using ABBR.

Except that screen readers won't expand spans or read out their title in any 
way. Though one could argue that screen readers should have their own 
heuristics to spot (the more unambiguous) roman numerals and read them out 
accordingly.

I think maybe the more fundamental question for Tate: why are you using roman 
numerals if you know they're going to confuse people?

Patrick

Patrick H. Lauke
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RE: [WSG] Appropriate use of the ABBR tag and Roman Numerals

[Patrick Lauke]

> E Michael Brandt

> How about >MMVII ?

I think this may stretch the meaning of DFN. A "defining instance" is the 
occurrence of the term where the term is defined. It does not enclose the 
actual definition. It also should only occur once per page for each defined 
term.

P

Patrick H. Lauke
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RE: [WSG] About Lightbox and SEO

[Patrick Lauke]

> Matthew Pennell

> 1) Many (most?) screenreaders do not read the title attribute by default.
> 2) Many (most?) screenreaders are perfectly able to execute JavaScript, so 
> when the user clicks the link, what happens? It might announce that the 
> document structure has been updated (by the addition of the lightbox div 
> overlay), but that doesn't tell you where or what has happened. 
> 3) Screen magnifier users might not be able to see the changes to the screen 
> when they click the lightbox link.
> 4) If the link's href points to the image, how does that help people with 
> scripting disabled? They just get the picture, with no caption. 

Another one:

5) by default, lightbox scripts don't account for keyboard users very well; try 
tabbing to a lightbox image, activate it, then try to simply tab to the close 
button. in most situations, the caret/focus is still on the page: you've 
effectively tabbed to the next focusable element on the main page, but the 
lightbox is still there and blocking the view. yes, some lightboxes have added 
things like pressing X or ESC to close the lightbox, but that's not obvious to 
users.

After a lot of soul-searching, I added a lightbox to our site, but made some 
modifications to its code and implementation. Still far from perfect, but I 
only use them for added interest, not really important content (though yes, we 
can argue that *any* content added is important, and should therefore be 
exposed completely to screen reader users):

1) the ALT reads "Photo: [title of image] (click to enlarge)"
2) yes, that's still a problem. I'm hoping that soon we'll be able to drop some 
ARIA stuff in there to alleviate the problem.
3) yes, also still problematic.
4) I've spent a bit of time working on this with additional scripting. 
Basically, the non-javascript link points to our photo gallery page. With 
javascript enabled, there's an additional script that modifies the href value 
of the lightbox links and adds a further GET parameter to the URL. the photo 
gallery page at the receiving end looks for this parameter, and if present 
simply pushes out the image on its own. Hope that makes sense...see it in 
action (with and without javascript) at http://www.salford.ac.uk/about/special/ 
for instance.
I use slimbox with mootools, and my additional script that does this is pretty 
straightforward
http://webhost.salford.ac.uk/common/slimbox_custom.js
5) i've modified the original slimbox to also close when a user tabs, to at 
least make it more friendly to sighted keyboard users.

In short, there's still no perfect solution, but I had to make a pragmatic 
decision in this regard.

I'm ready to be tarred and feathered now :)

P

Patrick H. Lauke
Web Editor
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RE: [WSG] About Lightbox and SEO

[Patrick Lauke]

Wow, nobody decided whether or not it was a good idea or not. Screen readers 
sit on top of the regular browser (in most cases on Windows, Internet 
Explorer). They don't support javascript, they read the browser's DOM. The DOM 
is affected by javascript. As users work their way through a page, they are 
simply using the browser. If there's any js behaviour associated with links or 
other tabbable elements, the browser fires these off as usual.
 
Now, as for title: screen readers "support" them (insofar as they can read the 
title information from the DOM). Whether or not they automatically read title 
out or not is a matter of user preferences. By default, they don't (but the 
title is still available to users if they trigger that particular functionality 
in the screen reader or set it as a preference).
 
P

Patrick H. Lauke
Web Editor
Enterprise & Development
University of Salford
Room 113, Faraday House
Salford, Greater Manchester
M5 4WT
UK

T +44 (0) 161 295 4779
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

www.salford.ac.uk

A GREATER MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY 






From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jixor - 
Stephen I
Sent: 03 December 2007 10:47
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: Re: [WSG] About Lightbox and SEO


Wow who decided it was a good idea to have screen readers support 
javascript and not title attributes!

You could make make the image point to an html file with the same 
filename and folder as the image then the javascript could replace with .htm 
with .jpg.

Matthew Pennell wrote: 

On Dec 3, 2007 7:48 AM, Jixor - Stephen I <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
wrote:


When I have used them the caption has always come form 
the link's title attribute so I would assume that to be accessible?



Accessible to whom?

Some points to bear in mind:

1) Many (most?) screenreaders do not read the title attribute 
by default.

2) Many (most?) screenreaders are perfectly able to execute 
JavaScript, so when the user clicks the link, what happens? It might announce 
that the document structure has been updated (by the addition of the lightbox 
div overlay), but that doesn't tell you where or what has happened. 

3) Screen magnifier users might not be able to see the changes 
to the screen when they click the lightbox link.

4) If the link's href points to the image, how does that help 
people with scripting disabled? They just get the picture, with no caption. 

Your solution is good inasmuch as it doesn't rely 100% on 
JavaScript, but there are still many accessibility issues to consider.

- Matthew.


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RE: [WSG] File comparison tool for Dreamweaver CS3

[Patrick Lauke]

Assuming you mean on Windows, I've used WinDiff in the past and was reasonably 
happy with it (though purely to get an "at a glance" comparison, not to 
actually do any further processing of compared files - it doesn't seem to like 
UTF-8, for a start...)
 
P

Patrick H. Lauke
Web Editor
Enterprise & Development
University of Salford
Room 113, Faraday House
Salford, Greater Manchester
M5 4WT
UK

T +44 (0) 161 295 4779
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

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A GREATER MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY 





From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Simon 
Cockayne
Sent: 17 December 2007 15:38
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: [WSG] File comparison tool for Dreamweaver CS3


Hi there,

What file comparison tool would you recommend for Dreamweaver CS3?


http://livedocs.adobe.com/en_US/Dreamweaver/9.0/help.html?content=WSc78c5058ca073340dcda9110b1f693f21-7edc.html
 states:

"Before you start, you must install a third-party file comparison tool 
on your system. For more information on file comparison tools, use a web search 
engine such as Google Search to search for "file comparison" or "diff" tools. 
Dreamweaver works with most third-party tools."

Cheers,

Simon

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RE: [WSG] BBC in Beta

[Patrick Lauke]

A few things I noticed (being ultra-critical perhaps at this stage):

First three links on the page are invisible skip links that don't show up, even 
on focus, plus there's another hidden link to accesskey definitions after the 
"accessibility help" link.

On the separate "modules", it's initially confusing that clicking on the 
expand/contract triangle and clicking on the actual heading itself has 
different effects. I'd have expected clicking on a heading to trigger the 
expand/contract, not take me to that particular section on the site (maybe it's 
just me).

The design itself is not very subtle...the gradients are just a bit too heavy 
and give a "bumpy" appearance. The gradient in the chunky footer makes the text 
towards the bottom of the box (e.g. "Healthy living, parenting...") a bit hard 
to read, as the contrast is far too low.

Search box has no LABEL, but a title attribute of "searchfield". They could 
have wrapped the text in the legend of the fieldset as an actual label, perhaps

Search

or just have a hidden (positioned off-screen) label for it (maybe with "search 
terms" as label text).

Just navigating by keyboard and hitting "Reset homepage" brings up the 
lightbox-style confirm/cancel dialog. However, the focus isn't set to this box, 
to tabbing simply cycles through the *whole* page's links (behind the dimmed 
"fog of war") before finally getting focus on the actual confirm/cancel buttons.

Speaking of buttons, confirm/cancel, reset homepage, save changes, cancel, edit 
etc should possibly be actual BUTTON elements, not regular A links (for the 
purists concerned with the distinction between links "going somewhere" and 
buttons "performing an action").

Hitting the "edit" buttons when a module is collapsed has no apparent effect, 
in which case they should remain hidden until expanded.


Patrick H. Lauke
Web Editor
Enterprise & Development
University of Salford
Room 113, Faraday House
Salford, Greater Manchester
M5 4WT
UK

T +44 (0) 161 295 4779
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

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RE: [WSG] Usability for downloading documents

[Patrick Lauke]

> Should we be making this decision for the user though? If, by 
> default, 
> PDFs open within the browser, then won't we be changing their user 
> experience by forcing them to open/save?

In principle yes, but because so many other sites have "worked around" this 
issue (usually by opening new windows, or forcing download), there is no real 
"default" that users are accustomed to. I've resorted to forcing download (yes, 
thus perpetuating the erosion of "default" myself...a vicious circle).

P

Patrick H. Lauke
Web Editor
Enterprise & Development
University of Salford
Room 113, Faraday House
Salford, Greater Manchester
M5 4WT
UK

T +44 (0) 161 295 4779
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RE: [WSG] long description and its implementation

[Patrick Lauke]

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ted Drake
> Sent: 04 February 2008 14:41
> To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
> Subject: RE: [WSG] long description and its implementation
> 
> It's been a while since I've dealt with the issue of screen reader
> accessibility and UFO insertion. I thought I remembered ours 
> being screen
> reader accessible until using window mode: transparent.
> 
> Here's a blog post about our solution.
> http://www.last-child.com/make-flash-accessible-to-screen-read
ers-in-transpa
> rent-window-mode/
> The flash movie is no longer on Yahoo Tech

Ah, bingo...I do set it as transparent (because sadly it needs to be, as the 
movie, when clicked, overlaps the buttons below).

As it's pretty much eye candy, I left it at that at the time (and then promptly 
forgot about it until now).

P 

Patrick H. Lauke
Web Editor
Enterprise & Development
University of Salford
Room 113, Faraday House
Salford, Greater Manchester
M5 4WT
UK

T +44 (0) 161 295 4779
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RE: [WSG] long description and its implementation

[Patrick Lauke]

Interesting...so what DO you get? Is that with JS enabled?

P 

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Steve Green
> Sent: 04 February 2008 14:23
> To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
> Subject: RE: [WSG] long description and its implementation
> 
> I checked www.salford.ac.uk with JAWS 7.10 and 9.0, and 
> neither of them see
> either the linked image or the Flash content.
> 
> Steve


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RE: [WSG] ie8 & flash scripts

[Patrick Lauke]

>  kevin mcmonagle

> hi,
> anyone know how ie8 will work with ufo flash detection js and and the 
> standard dreamweaver flv embedding scripts?
> thanks in advance
> kevin

There's not even a downloadable beta of ie8 out yet...so I think there won't be 
much of an answer beyond speculation?

P

Patrick H. Lauke
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University of Salford
Room 113, Faraday House
Salford, Greater Manchester
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RE: [WSG] IE8 news

[Patrick Lauke]

> Tate Johnson

> I agree with your latter point. However, I fear that it 
> protects lazy  
> developers who refuse to adopt standards based practices. That said,  
> the more and more you look at the community on the whole; it seems  
> less ignorant today than at the start of the decade.

The problem is that those lazy or ignorant developers are *not* actually
part of the community...they may not even realise that there *is* a community.

P

Patrick H. Lauke
Web Editor
Enterprise & Development
University of Salford
Room 113, Faraday House
Salford, Greater Manchester
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RE: [WSG] firefox 3 beta5

[Patrick Lauke]

> Korny Sietsma

> Release Candidate 1 is out now, so hopefully things will get more
> stable when Ubuntu picks it up, but at the moment it's a world of pain
> - at least for my configuration!

Beta5 and RC1 have been rock-solid on my systems (WinXP). And, as far as I 
understand, RC1 is fairly feature complete (with regards to its rendering 
engine), unless some major howlers are reported in the next few weeks. From 
experience, the majority of instability / weird behaviour in these situations 
comes from reuse of an old profile...when jumping to a major new version, I'd 
always advise to start with a completely fresh profile to avoid any 
incompatibilities.

P

Patrick H. Lauke
Web Editor
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University of Salford
Room 113, Faraday House
Salford, Greater Manchester
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RE: [WSG] HTML special characters coding

[Patrick Lauke]

> Rick Lecoat

> So let me see if I have this right: as long as my page declares an  
> encoding (I use UTF-8) I don't need to encode the entities, I 
> can just  
> type them straight into the markup. Is that correct?

Make sure that your whole environment is UTF-8 (your code editor, any database 
input forms /admin page you may have, etc). Then yes, it should all work fine.
 
> Will it validate? (I normally use an xhtml 1.0 strict doctype).

Yes.

P

Patrick H. Lauke
Web Editor
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Room 113, Faraday House
Salford, Greater Manchester
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T +44 (0) 161 295 4779
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RE: [WSG] html vs. html

[Patrick Lauke]

> jody tate

> Most of their recommendations  
> include URI examples that use the .html extension and the 
> site itself  
> appears to use .html extensions: 
> http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/Cover.html.

In fact, there's some advice that advocates ditching file extensions altogether 
for future-proofing

http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI
and specifically http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI#remove

P

Patrick H. Lauke
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Room 113, Faraday House
Salford, Greater Manchester
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T +44 (0) 161 295 4779
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RE: [WSG] Marking Up Poems

[Patrick Lauke]

Well yes, you could mark it up as XML behind the scenes, but you shouldn't be 
sending XML to the browser. They might or might not be able to cope with it, 
but you'd be breaking validation (unless you used XHTML sent as actual XML and 
start namespacing things).
 
In simple terms, I'd mark up each stanza as a paragraph and slap line breaks in 
for each line.
 
P
 



From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of James 
Jeffery
Sent: 19 June 2008 10:08
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: [WSG] Marking Up Poems


A question was raised at work today 'How do you mark up a poem'.

I looked into it but found nothing worthy. My original thought was to 
use P's and class names, but one article I read said XML is perfect for this 
case.

Whats your views on this, anyone actually did it before?

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RE: [WSG] html vs. html

[Patrick Lauke]

> Jonathan D'mello

> To go off on a tangent Patrick, this is getting to be a rather common
> excuse from some developers. If they don't want to change code, they
> say it will break W3C standards.

The core tenet of "web standards" is to choose the most 
semantically/structurally appropriate way to mark content up using official W3C 
standards. But hey, feel free to just start making up your own markup 
(, , ) and style it with 
CSS...visually, it will probably look fine, but don't be surprised if you run 
into serious interoperability problems and issues like assistive technology not 
being able to understand what the heck you actually meant with your made-up 
markup...

P

Patrick H. Lauke
Web Editor
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University of Salford
Room 113, Faraday House
Salford, Greater Manchester
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RE: [WSG] Forcing a vertical scrollbar in Firefox 3

[Patrick Lauke]

> [EMAIL PROTECTED]

> html { overflow-y: scroll; }

Ah, back in the days I tried it Opera wasn't playing ball. I now see that (at 
least Opera 9.5) understands this now.

Good stuff.

P

Patrick H. Lauke
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University of Salford
Room 113, Faraday House
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RE: [WSG] Forcing a vertical scrollbar in Firefox 3

[Patrick Lauke]

 

> Mark Voss

> html{min-height:100.2%;}

even more subtle

html { min-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 1px; } 

http://www.splintered.co.uk/experiments/49/

P

Patrick H. Lauke
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RE: [WSG] Browsers and Zooming

[Patrick Lauke]

 




From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mark 
Stickley
Sent: 03 July 2008 14:56
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: Re: [WSG] Browsers and Zooming


I wonder what a partially sighted user would thing of these 
'improvements'. Would they be glad that now they can see images a little easier 
and the layout seems to break less or would they be annoyed at the sudden 
appearance of a horizontal scrollbar?
 

Or would they be using screen magnification software anyway, and it wouldn't 
make a difference to them?
 
P

Patrick H. Lauke
Web Editor
Enterprise & Development
University of Salford
Room 113, Faraday House
Salford, Greater Manchester
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T +44 (0) 161 295 4779
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RE: [WSG] Who are the "Away on leave" Notices from? [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

[Patrick Lauke]

wondering what part of THREAD CLOSED people don't understand...


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RE: [WSG] RE: Tools or analytics to detect assistive devices

[Patrick Lauke]

> http://www.accessifyforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=3775

The flash method (detect presence of software that hooks into MSAA) may
be of some help if you write a small swf that then pings Google
Analytics or similar. But worth noting this recent article
http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/?p=61

More fundamentally though, the stats - if you manage to collect them -
could be interpreted either way:

- we are getting an insignificant number of screenreader users, so it's
not worth bothering with accessibility (which also holds the additional
misconception that accessibility is just about the extreme case of blind
users with screenreaders, rather than the whole spectrum of different
users, needs, assistive technologies, etc)

or

- we are getting such an insignificant number of screenreader users
BECAUSE our site is so awful in terms of accessibility, so we really
need to improve it.

As for checking which users have trouble with certain pages, no stats
package will help I think. Best you can do is make a very prominent
help/contact link on all your pages and allow for users to send feedback
directly.

P

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RE: [WSG] inline-block effect

[Patrick Lauke]

> Brett Patterson
>  what does OP mean?

Original Poster, i.e. the one who started this thread.

P

Patrick H. Lauke
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RE: [WSG] Downloading Fonts

[Patrick Lauke]

> Ted Drake

> Safari and firefox3 support the @font-face attribute. I don't know the
status of Opera and IE8.

I think current Opera doesn't, but the next version (Opera 10, currently
available as alpha) will http://www.opera.com/browser/next/

P

Patrick H. Lauke
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Room 113, Faraday House
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RE: [WSG]WCAG 2.0 enlarging text to 200% ?

[Patrick Lauke]

> Heather

> With WCAG 2.0 finally coming out yesterday - I was wondering how many
ctrl + clicks in (firefox for example) 200% is?

> I would say it was 3 but some colleagues argue 2 or 4 ? Any
suggestions?

I'd say conceptually that's quite a nitpicky argument...say a page broke
spectacularly after 4 resize steps...would they then argue "but it
passes WCAG 2.0's SC, because it's 3 steps that go to 200%"? Also, by
default, Firefox 3 has whole page zoom (text, images and all) enabled,
and has to explicitly be set to only resize text.

With that said, go to about:config and look for
toolkit.zoomManager.zoomValues, and this will show the various zoom
factors at each step. In my case (which should be the default) these
are:

.3, .5, .67, .8, .9, 1, 1.1, 1.2, 1.33, 1.5, 1.7, 2, 2.4, 3

So, nominally 200% (which, according to the "Understanding..." bit for
that SC, means "200%, that is, up to twice the width and height" - so
really a 400% increase in total area) is actually 6 steps, if you want
to go purely by numbers.

P

Patrick H. Lauke
Web Editor
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Room 113, Faraday House
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RE: [WSG] Blockquote

[Patrick Lauke]

Bringing it all back to the core question: cite is an optional
attribute, so can be omitted when using the blockquote element.

P

Patrick H. Lauke
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RE: [WSG] Copyright Issues

[Patrick Lauke]

> James Milligan

> What about coming up with your own?Not meaning to sound rude, but it
could be an opportunity for you.

+1

Particularly since, if I remember correctly, you already ended up with
the same problem with your startrek-related site that forced you to take
it offline?

P

Patrick H. Lauke
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RE: [WSG] IE and the element

[Patrick Lauke]

> Chris F.A. Johnson

> On Tue, 24 Feb 2009, John Horner wrote:
>> 1) Button elements don't need styling, they take their styling from 
>> the user's operating system, which they are, I assume, familiar and 
>> comfortable with. I won't be reinventing the wheel.

> Button elements are styled by the browser.

But the browser should, in normal circumstances, heed any OS preferences
(or at least, unless explicitly styled differently, present all those
controls with a consistent look and feel).

>> 2) Anchor elements don't have a built-in "disabled" mode, buttons
   do,

>Disabled mode is just more styling.

It's also a functional change, as it disables the button (makes it
unclickable and does not trigger the specified onclick action).

>> and again the styling comes directly from the OS and the user is 
>> familiar with it.

> Anchor elements are styled by the browser.

I believe John meant "the styling of the 'disabled' button", so same as
above applies.

P

Patrick H. Lauke
Web Editor
Enterprise & Development
University of Salford
Room 113, Faraday House
Salford, Greater Manchester
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RE: [WSG] Code scan, complient to guidelines version 2.0

[Patrick Lauke]

> David Dorward

> I use siteSifter - http://www.sitesifter.co.uk/

With the usual caveat that automated testing tools can flag up false
positives and false negatives (for instance, on one site I just ran
through the free sitesifter service, it flagged the lack of
Content-Language in the HTTP header as a problem, while ignoring the
fact that the language is set with both lang="en" and xml:lang="en" in
the actual document).

Particularly in the case of the tech-agnostic WCAG 2, automated tools
can only really check the machine-checkable parts, and there only using
an interpretation of the WCAG 2 Techniques document for a specific
subset of technologies.

P

Patrick H. Lauke
Web Editor
Enterprise & Development
University of Salford
Room 113, Faraday House
Salford, Greater Manchester
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UK

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RE: [WSG] a WCAG 2.0 question

[Patrick Lauke]

> Jon Gunderson

> I think this requirement is a little out dated, screen readers today
do a good job of telling people that a new window is open.

But, as discussed, the requirement actually doesn't concern itself
directly with links popping up new windows, but more things like the
page all of a sudden reloading, changing url, etc unexpectedly. So it's
not outdated.

P

Patrick H. Lauke
Web Editor
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University of Salford
Room 113, Faraday House
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RE: [WSG] add to favorites?

[Patrick Lauke]

> designer
> Does anyone know of a modern, valid, reasonably cross-browser way to
provide a link on a page so that a user can add the page to favourites?
The only one I can find is IE only:

I know you're probably asking because a client insists on having it,
but...have we not evolved yet beyond replicating browser functionality
in-page? Will there also be a "make this my homepage" link?

Sorry, being a grumpy bar-stewart today...

P

Patrick H. Lauke
Web Editor
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University of Salford
Room 113, Faraday House
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RE: [WSG] Where is browser compatibility in wcag?

[Patrick Lauke]

> Andreas Boehmer [Addictive Media]

> to be accessible the site doesn't necessarily have to look great, but
at least the content should show up in all browsers, even the old ones,
right?  


Well, just talking WCAG 2, the requirement would be to use
accessibility-supported technologies (see
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/#cc4 and
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/#accessibility-supporteddef). This does not,
however, take into account - or make any special requirement/concession
to - potential browser bugs (as seems to be the case with what you're
mentioning regarding IE5 not showing anything) or user agents which do
not themselves conform or wrongly implement those technologies.


> I went through WCAG 1 and WCAG 2, and I expected an appropriate
guideline to show up under Priority 1 (or Level A), but nothing. Or am I
missing something in the obscure wording of the document that is WCAG?


WCAG's primary concern is to ensure accessibility for users with
disabilities, not universal access on all devices, operating systems,
user preferences, etc.

Having said that, I'd say that regardless of WCAG or not, it would be
best practice to try and work around browser bugs - particularly if
there's evidence that the site does still have a sizeable portion of
users coming in with IE5, making it a financially viable proposition. As
a last resort, you *could* implement some specific conditional comments
for version 5, for instance.

P

Patrick H. Lauke
Web Editor
Enterprise & Development
University of Salford
Room 113, Faraday House
Salford, Greater Manchester
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UK

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RE: [WSG] Quick accessibility question

[Patrick Lauke]

Tested with JAWS 4.02, and yes, it reads it as "search".
That's not to say, though, that all screenreaders behave this way...
Let me guess...underlines for accesskeys ?

One thing that worries me about doing those sorts of things is that
the result is very...non semantic. Not sure how, say, search
engines would react to seeing Words broken up like that. Would
they still index the word itself, or would they see an "S" and
"earch"? (sure, in this case it doesn't make a difference, but
I'm thinking in more general terms, e.g. headings using an image
as an ornate initial or something - search engines would presumably
not recognise the designer's intention - why should they? - and
not see the word as a whole).

Patrick

Patrick H. Lauke
Webmaster / University of Salford
http://www.salford.ac.uk

> -Original Message-
> From: Andy Budd [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: 15 June 2004 11:39
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [WSG] Quick accessibility question
> 
> 
> Here's a quick (and probably stupid) accessibility question regarding 
> screen readers.
> 
> Search
> 
> I assume the a screen reader will read this out as "Search" 
> and not "S 
> earch".
> 
> 
> Andy Budd
> 
> http://www.message.uk.com/
> 
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RE: [WSG] Quick accessibility question

[Patrick Lauke]

> From: Hugh Todd 

> Just tried it with a preview version of Apple's Spoken Interface in 
> Safari. I stuck your code into the middle of a standard form 
> element to 
> see what would happen, and it read it as "S" "earch". I'd be 
> interested 
> to know why (how the reader determines what to read and how).

Well, in simple terms, the readers will be looking for complete words.
If something is interrupted - be it by a space, a  , (probably even)
­, or indeed is broken up by separating bits of it in different
elements (even if they're inline, like ) - it will be seen as
two separate words. Simple as that...

Patrick

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RE: [WSG] ALPHA Testers Needed

[Patrick Lauke]

Sounds 
interesting, but...I can do all that already with some find/replaces, so 
I'm
not 
sure if people will be willing to pay for it (even if $5 is such a low 
price).
 
Or are 
you planning to have your tool parse the actual CSS, rather than 
simply
looking for occurences of comments, spaces, line-breaks 
?
 
Patrick

Patrick H. 
LaukeWebmaster / University of Salfordhttp://www.salford.ac.uk 

RE: [WSG] invalid xhtml

[Patrick Lauke]

> The best solution is to sniff if the UA accepts 
> application/xhtml+xml, 
> and if so, serve XHTML, otherwise, convert it to HTML4.01 and 
> serve it 
> that way. 

or you could convert it to xhtml 1.0 strict, which *may* still
be sent as text/html

Patrick

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RE: [WSG] Accessibililty and the positioning of navigation

[Patrick Lauke]

There's two schools of thought:

1) navigation first, content second, with a "skip to the content" link
2) content first, navigation second, with a "skip to the navigation" link

It's often argued that 2) is better for SEO, as it "top-loads" your documents,
putting your relevant content fairly high up in the document - which some
search engines give extra brownie points for.

What you do is really up to you, though. Just be consistent in your
choice.

The comparison with the index of a book works...to a point. For instance,
you don't have the complete index on every single page, or at the beginning
of every single chapter, of the book...

My GBP0.02 on the matter, anyway,

Patrick

Patrick H. Lauke
Webmaster / University of Salford
http://www.salford.ac.uk

> -Original Message-
> From: Nico Morgan [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: 18 June 2004 14:32
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [WSG] Accessibililty and the positioning of navigation
> 
> 
> I am about to start teaching a web development course to a group of
> teenagers and would like to clarify something in my mind before I
> mislead them.
> 
> In short, I am unhappy with the theory behind placement of navigation
> at the end of documents.
> 
> As I understand it, the idea of placing navigation at the end of the
> document flow is that when the page is viewed by JAWS or other
> "disability" browsers the user wants to get straight into the content
> of the page rather than wade through the navigation first. Hence the
> designer places the code so that with CSS it can be aboslutely
> positioned but without it is below the main content of the page.
> 
> I'm not sure I agree. Surely when you read a book, whether you are
> disabled or otherwise, the contents page is one of the first things
> you come to. It enables you to find the part of the book you wish to
> read first. Is the same not true of web sites? If I follow a link to a
> site I've not been to before I often look for the "about" link first,
> to find out more about what I am reading. I certainly wouldn't want to
> wade through the whole of the home page in order to get to the
> navigation.
> 
> Can someone clarify this for me?
> 
> Nico
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RE: [WSG] Tim Berners-Lee - Keeping Web Universal

[Patrick Lauke]

I found it interesting that the IHT article page does
not work unless you have javascript enabled...
and even when it *is* enabled, their navigation (hitting
the third column to move to the next "page") is fairly non
standard, and is not backed up by any other cues to the
user (heck, even a tooltip would have done, or a change
of cursor)...but I digress

Patrick

Patrick H. Lauke
Webmaster / University of Salford
http://www.salford.ac.uk

> -Original Message-
> From: Tim Shortt [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: 20 June 2004 16:44
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [WSG] Tim Berners-Lee - Keeping Web Universal
> 
> 
> Thought this might interest the group:
> 
> http://www.iht.com/articles/525584.html
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RE: [WSG] invalid xhtml

[Patrick Lauke]

> From: Andrew Sione Taumoefolau
[...]
> XHTML 1.0 strict is still XML, which means that you should not send it
> as text/html.

I beg to differ on this hair-splitting point:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/NOTE-xhtml-media-types-20020801/#text-html

"[XHTML1] defines a profile of use of XHTML which is compatible with HTML
4.01 and which may also be labeled as text/html"

Patrick

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RE: [WSG] invalid xhtml

[Patrick Lauke]

> From: Andrew Sione Taumoefolau
[...]
> I'm not sure that we differ on this point.

after re-reading your message, you're right. As I skimmed over
the 100 odd emails in this list's folder that accumulated over
the weekend, I could have sworn you had written MUST NOT, instead
of SHOULD NOT.

Ah, I love those subtle differences ;)

P
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RE: [WSG] Tim Berners-Lee - Keeping Web Universal

[Patrick Lauke]

> From: Stephanie
[...]
> In
> fact, if you disable javascript and then go to the article, you can't
> even see the first page.

I was just working on something else at the time, and had javascript
disabled...and that's what happened when I followed the link to the article.
Confused the hell out of me, until I realised my (? debatable!) mistake.

Anyway, sorry for steering this thread off course ;)

Patrick

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RE: [WSG] Australian accessiblitly and the law?

[Patrick Lauke]

> From: Kay Smoljak
[...]
> an online store selling rubber
> widgets probably wouldn't be covered under "provision of services
> including professional services

So are they going to sell those rubber widgets in an unprofessional
manner?

Patrick

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RE: [WSG] 508??

[Patrick Lauke]

Tim knows that. What Tim was asking was: what on earth is the
thread starter asking when he says
"Would someone please explain why the WSG thinks Section 508 is what should
be used?"

I'd be interested in what on earth he's talking about as well, coincidentally...

Patrick


-Original Message- 
From: t94xr.net.nz webmaster [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Tue 29/06/2004 15:23 
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Cc: 
Subject: Re: [WSG] 508??




> Sure, if you explain what on earth you're talking about.
>
> -- tim
508 is this,

http://www.contentquality.com/mynewtester/cynthia.exe?rptmode=-1&runcr=1&url1=http://www.t94xr.net.nz/

Conformance to web accessability standards produced by the W3C.

Basically those ponts there tell you wats required for 508 compliance.
Its a first and simple step.

t94xr
http://www.t94xr.net.nz/


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RE: [WSG] 508??

[Patrick Lauke]

Despite some minor flaws, Joe Clark's "Building Accessible Websites"
is still one of the best around.
Captioning of quicktime (you mean via SMIL, I assume) is still not widely
implemented due to flaky support in certain areas
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/2004AprJun/0651.html
Of course, you'll never find a single
Comprehensive Accessibility Text, as
the field is constantly evolving and changing. What you can get, though,
is books covering the majority of the basis, and follow that up with good
practice examples. They're out there, you just need to look in the right
places (and frequent lists like the above featured WAI-IG, or forums such
as www.accessifyforum.com for instance).

Patrick

Patrick H. Lauke
Webmaster / University of Salford
http://www.salford.ac.uk

> -Original Message-
> From: ckimedia [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: 30 June 2004 15:29
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: [WSG] 508??
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Lee would recommend a comprehensive accessibility text. I've scoured 
> Amazon to the point of red eye, and have found nothing but 
> how to pass 
> Bobby. This text should include captioning of Quicktime, and other 
> dynamic media considerations.
> 
> C
> 
> On Wednesday, June 30, 2004, at 05:47 AM, Lee Roberts wrote:
> 
> > Jesse,
> > I'll agree it makes them think about it for about ... 10 seconds.  
> > Then they
> > go and start using those automated evaluators and mess it all up.  
> > I've used
> > every evaluator there is and none come as close to meeting my 
> > experience as
> > I would like.
> >
> > You can pass those automated test very easily and then 
> totally ignore 
> > some
> > very important elements.  One accessibility presentation I 
> went to had 
> > a
> > company representative look like a fool when he was showing 
> how JAWS 
> > worked
> > with their pages.  The designer passed all the automated tests, but 
> > failed
> > to lineate the table correctly so JAWS was jumping all around the 
> > screen
> > reading things out of order.  Yep, Bobby said it passed - 
> Bobby lied 
> > too.
> >
> > Yes, much of the Assistive Technology relies upon 
> Microsoft.  Didn't 
> > you
> > realize that Microsoft doesn't allow anyone access to their core 
> > functions?
> > Oh, that's last millennia's news.
> >
> > We should fire the federal judges that ruled in favor of 
> Microsoft.  
> > They
> > just gave too much power to Microsoft and I'm not talking their
> > anti-competitive attitudes.  I'm talking embedding their browser 
> > further
> > into their operating systems.  It's going to get to the point that 
> > their
> > browser will enable any web site to take control of the 
> computer again 
> > ...
> > just like when we used to cause hard drive formats.
> >
> > Jesse, please tell me how Canada falls under Section 508.  
> I realize 
> > Canada
> > falls under our telecommunications acts, but I wasn't aware that 
> > Canada had
> > to comply with Section 508.  As I understood it, Canada's rules, 
> > although
> > not totally accepted, required bi-lingual sites and even more 
> > accessibility
> > than Section 508 requires.  Please correct me if I'm wrong; 
> I like to 
> > keep
> > up with how other countries are handling the issues.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Lee Roberts
> >
> >
> > -Original Message-
> > From: J Rodgers [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > Sent: Wednesday, June 30, 2004 5:42 AM
> > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > Subject: Re: [WSG] 508??
> >
> >
> >> Have you looked at the other assistive technologies available?
> >
> > Yes I work closely with our Office for Persons with 
> Disabilities, even
> > presented at their Assistive Technology Fair last year. This year I 
> > will as
> > well and sounds like it will be even bigger than last year. 
> There are 
> > some
> > very cool technologies out there.
> >
> >> England and the other countries requiring accessible web 
> sites state
> >> 508 did not meet their requirements for accessible web 
> sites.  So, how
> >> can we state that Section 508 is the end-all solution when other
> >> governments are saying it isn't enough?
> >
> > Not saying it was an end-all, just saying it was a decent place to 
> > start. At
> > the very least it is forcing a lot of software developers and web 
> > designers
> > to think accessible design.
> >
> >> AT developers have the User Agent Accessibility Guidelines 
> they have
> >> to follow.  There is at least one person from the JAWS team on the
> >> working group.
> >>
> >> Since JAWS uses Internet Explorer and the Microsoft Accessibility
> >> Agent, I would hope that Microsoft starts supporting 
> standards better 
> >> than
> > they do.
> >> And that they stop with their proprietary stuff.  Netscape 
> has begun
> >> to support OBJECT so we don't need to use EMBED/NOEMBED any longer
> >> unless you want to support earlier versions.  Oh my, do we want to
> >> support Netscape 4.x?  I don't and don't even come close 
> to trying any

RE: [WSG] is REQUIRED

[Patrick Lauke]

If I'm not mistaken, a single fieldset around your entire form content
will do the trick. So, just change

...

to


...


 
Patrick

-Original Message- 
From: Barry Beattie [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Fri 02/07/2004 01:38 
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Cc: 
Subject: RE: [WSG]  is REQUIRED




Mordechai,

are you saying that, for XHTML1.1 complience, that a label and it's
associated form element needs to be within a fieldset?

if so, we've got a few changes to do around here ... D'oh!

thanx
barry.b

-Original Message-
From: Mordechai Peller [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, 2 July 2004 10:03 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [WSG]  is REQUIRED

After getting: "Error: element label not allowed here; possible cause is

an inline element containing a block-level element." I finally figured
out that a fieldset is required for XHTML1.1. However, after after doing

some checking I couldn't find anything at the W3C about it in anything
which passes even for their version of plain English. Sure, in the
DTD's, grammars, etc., I found it stated, but not in anything which
doesn't remind me of some of college classes.


It's amazing how little computers have changed in the last 25 years.
Sure, they've become orders of magnitude more powerful and are therefor
able to do so much more. But are they really different  from the old
TRS-80 Model I Level 2 which the guy at Radio Shack let me play with?

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<>

RE: [WSG] id or class on html or body

[Patrick Lauke]

Keep in mind that you can't have id or class attributes on the HTML
element (not in xhtml, nor html4). Apply them to the BODY instead.

Patrick

Patrick H. Lauke
Webmaster / University of Salford
http://www.salford.ac.uk

> -Original Message-
> From: Mordechai Peller [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: 09 July 2004 08:55
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [WSG] id or class on html or body
> 
> 
> Putting an id or class on the html or body tags is a useful way of 
> targeting slight variations in style rules with resorting to a second 
> style sheet.
> 
> I remember seeing a discussion of the pros and cons, but I can't 
> remember where. Does anybody have a link? Or perhaps the 
> discussion can 
> begin anew.
> 
> Thanks.
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RE: [WSG] HELP REQUEST: netscape float:absolute problem

[Patrick Lauke]

Haven't really waded through your css, so pardon me if it's an obvious one:
have you set the parent to position:relative or absolute to force the float to use it
as a point of reference?

And your question is confusing, as there is no such beast as float:absolute
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/visuren.html#float-position
(but I didn't spot that in your code, so I'm assuming it's just your way of
describing the problem...)

As for using HELP REQUEST...90% of messages on this list are help requests...so
I don't think it would be that useful, personally.

Patrick

Patrick H. Lauke
Webmaster / University of Salford
http://www.salford.ac.uk

> -Original Message-
> From: Scott Reston [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: 09 July 2004 14:33
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [WSG] HELP REQUEST: netscape float:absolute problem
> 
> 
> I'm experincing a problem that manifests only in Netscape 
> (regardless of platform). It looks like float:absolute is 
> relative to the viewport, rather than the containing parent div block.
> 
> I've highlighted the offending blocks in blue:
> http://www.capstrat.com/development/cs2004/template.html
> 
> css and html are in the same doc.
> 
> has anyone run up against this? any thoughts on a workaround?
> 
> (note - i'm not touching the nav yet, so it's just a placeholder...)
> 
> scott reston
> 
> ps - what does everyone think about prepending the subject 
> help request messages with something like "HELP REQUEST" so 
> that folks that aren't inclined to help would be able to skip 
> without opening the email? just a thought...
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RE: [WSG] Internal CSS in XHTML served as application/xhtml+xml

[Patrick Lauke]

Derek,

have a read through
http://devedge.netscape.com/viewsource/2003/xhtml-style-script/

...but to answer the question quickly: it should work if you use

//

Patrick

Patrick H. Lauke
Webmaster / University of Salford
http://www.salford.ac.uk

> -Original Message-
> From: Derek Featherstone [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: 09 July 2004 16:28
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: RE: [WSG] Internal CSS in XHTML served as 
> application/xhtml+xml
> 
> 
> Roger wrote:
> > Anyway, I was wondering if, and how, other people hide 
> internal CSS in
> > XHTML documents from user agents that don't support CSS. 
> Note that this
> > is about cases when moving the CSS to an external file is not an
> > option, for whatever reason.
> 
> On a related note -- I recently setup content negotiation on 
> WATS.ca to
> serve our XHTML as application/xhtml+xml and most of the site 
> worked fine.
> The one spot where it failed was with inline JavaScript -- we have a
> resources page ( http://www.wats.ca/resources/testingtools/44 ) that
> contains many JS bookmarklets which then caused loads of 
> parsing errors, and
> they don't display in gecko based browsers...
> 
> Normally, I would move all the JS to an external file as 
> well, but in this
> case, it doesn't really make sense. I considered moving the 
> JS for each
> bookmarklet to its own .js file, but that eliminates the 
> utility and ease
> with which someone can drag and drop the bookmarklet onto 
> their bookmarks
> bar in their browser, so isn't an acceptable solution. So, 
> I'm looking for a
> way to escape inline javascript, and not really sure if there are any
> solutions to that problem...
> 
> Thoughts on this would be appreciated as well... I could futz 
> about with our
> system to always serve that page as text/html, but would 
> prefer to send it
> as application/xhtml+xml if I can.
> 
> Best regards,
> Derek.
> -- 
> Derek Featherstone [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> phone: 613.599.9784;   toll-free: 1.866.932.4878 (North America)
> Web Accessibility:  http://www.wats.ca
> Web Development: http://www.furtherahead.com
> Personal: http://www.boxofchocolates.ca
> 
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RE: [WSG] id or class on html or body

[Patrick Lauke]

> is it good style to do so just to get the 
> correct behavior from a menu, since, after all, I'm not using them to 
> style the body at all (although I suppose I could).

if you look at it the other way around though, it makes sense:
the id/class is something intrinsic to the document itself;
you're then taking advantage of this to style things in different situations.

if you see what i'm getting at.

of course, the id/class should be descriptive, rather than presentational
(e.g. id="aboutpage" rather than id="greennavbar")

P

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RE: [WSG] Internal CSS in XHTML served as application/xhtml+xml

[Patrick Lauke]

> This breaks down though, for references like this in the page for
> bookmarklets (pardon the length):

but wouldn't you say that bookmarklets are a bit of a perversion of
the standard, in which case it becomes academic to discuss how these
can be served in a standards-compliant way?

or is it just me?

Patrick

RE: [WSG] setting width for s when inline

[Patrick Lauke]

> From: Scott Reston 
[...]
> Is it possible to set width on an inline element?

even though you now have a solution, I'd just like to answer
this part of your question.

As per http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/visudet.html#q4

"10.3.1 Inline, non-replaced elements

The 'width' property does not apply. A specified value of 'auto'
for 'left', 'right', 'margin-left' or 'margin-right' becomes a
computed value of '0'."

Patrick

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RE: [WSG] CSS Opacity

[Patrick Lauke]

This may be of interest
http://archivist.incutio.com/viewlist/css-discuss/39758

In short, you could avoid the problem completely by using
a 24bit PNG for the background, rather than using opacity.

Patrick

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RE: [WSG] Web Accessability IE Toolbar

[Patrick Lauke]

> From: Lee Roberts
[...]
> It's bad enough everyone 
> thinks they need
> to do it, but for an accessibility group to do it I'm flabbergasted.

most current screenreaders / assistive technologie hook into IE in some way
to provide web browsing. so it's still a harsh reality that some user groups
WILL have to use IE, and developers need to therefore at least test their
pages in this browser. offering this toolbar to the developers just makes
life a little easier...now if i have a page open in IE i can do most of my
validation etc there as well, rather than having to copy the URL and paste it
into firefox, to take advantage of the web developer extension.

and yes, some functions - like the "colour" ones, which - i believe - use
IE's proprietary filters to simulate b/w display etc - are very useful and not
directly replicated in other toolbars (Mozilla/Firefox ones or otherwise).

see it as another one of many tools available to developers, not as a social
commentary or a "validation" of IE's merits.

Patrick

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RE: [WSG] setting width for s when inline

[Patrick Lauke]

> From: Scott Reston

> Does this suggest that 
> inline elements cannot have a width property at all?

Yes. Any browser that applies width specified in CSS to an inline
element (or even a block element that has been set to display:inline)
is not behaving in line with the spec.

> Can you clarify what the spec means by 'replaced'?

http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/conform.html#replaced-element

In simplified terms, replaced elements are those that...heck...are
replaced by something else when displayed. the IMG element is replaced
with the image itself, INPUT,TEXTAREA,SELECT are replaced with UI elements
for the form widgets, OBJECT is replaced with whatever external piece
of "multimedia" (god I hate that term) you specify.

To take the example of IMG, this has an intrinsic dimension (defined just
below "replaced element" on the link above) in that the image is made up of
a fixed number of pixels, so the width/height are part of the image itself.
Although it's inline, the intrinsic width is then honoured in the display
(but again setting any width in the CSS is still ignored)

Hope this makes some kind of sense...as I'm starting to confuse myself here ;)

Patrick

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RE: [WSG] text field size tag

[Patrick Lauke]

> It could be 
> that if padding, border and margin values are set (let's say 
> to zero) the widths of the different form controls may be the 
> same - or at least a bit closer ;)

I wouldn't hold my breath on that one. Form elements are notoriously
difficult to consistently style, as they are replaced elements
effectively under the direct control of the browser/OS. Worth a try,
but it's more than likely that fixing it in one browser will throw up
problems in another browser, and you'll end up chasing your own tail.

IMHO anyway,

Patrick

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RE: [WSG] setting width for s when inline

[Patrick Lauke]

> Is the issue that giving an element float makes
> the browser treat it as a block element?

LI is a block level element by default, so you can apply width, regardless
of whether or not it's floated.

Patrick

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RE: [WSG] technique of converting to tablefree layout

[Patrick Lauke]

Depends on how bad the table-soup is, but I usually like to 
start with some basic cleanup with find/replace using regular
expressions in DWMX.

Search for: ]*)>
Replace with:

You can, of course, add more tag names in there depending on your situation,
with the obvious caveat that this only removes the tags themselves, not the
content in between opening/closing tags...so if you have, say, a block
of javascript


blahblah


Running a replace for ]*)> will leave blahblah in place...

Anyway, your mileage may vary, and it will still need a good ammount of
hand-cleaning...but at least it removes the tougher stains left on the table cloth.

Patrick

Patrick H. Lauke
Webmaster / University of Salford
http://www.salford.ac.uk

> -Original Message-
> From: Lea de Groot 
> Sent: 21 July 2004 10:00
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [WSG] technique of converting to tablefree layout
> 
> 
> What are people's preferred techniques for 'screen scraping' existing 
> sites to get the text from a tag-soup table layout?
> When a page has copious links and such, simply copying the text from 
> the browser doesn't always give enough content to be a useful quick 
> method.
> 
> Lea
> -- 
> Lea de Groot
> Elysian Systems - I Understand the Internet 
> 
> Web Design, Usability, Information Architecture, Search Engine 
> Optimisation
> Brisbane, Australia
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RE: [WSG] Comment syntax in external javascript files?

[Patrick Lauke]

I may well be wrong, but as far as I understand it it's not needed at
all if your files (javascript, or stylesheets for that matter) are external.
When your script is embedded in the page, it needs the proper commenting there
as it needs to "live" within a well-formed XML file. When it's outside of it,
there's no such requirement.

Unless I've misinterpreted the advice
in C.4. http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/#guidelines

Patrick

Patrick H. Lauke
Webmaster / University of Salford
http://www.salford.ac.uk

> -Original Message-
> From: Nick Gleitzman
> Sent: 21 July 2004 14:23
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [WSG] Comment syntax in external javascript files?
> 
> 
> Hi all
> 
> Can anyone please tell me how much of the following is needed if I'm 
> calling javascript from an external file into a XHTML Strict 
> code file?
> 
> I know that for javascript included *in* the file, the 
> comment syntax is
> 
> 
> 
> but what's the go in an external file? I presume the CDATA prolog is 
> still needed - but how much of it?
> 
> TIA
> 
> Nick
> ___
> Omnivision. Websight.
> http://www.omnivision.com.au/
> 
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RE: [WSG] Titles Acronyms Abbr etc

[Patrick Lauke]

Gah...not this discussion again...

Acronyms are a subset of abbreviations. All acronyms are
abbreviations, but not all abbreviations are acronyms.

Now, once it comes to defining what an acronym is, there's
cultural/regional differences as well: some argue that
acronyms need to be pronounceable, others say that any
initialism is also an acronym (where again others argue that
initialisms are only a subset of acronyms)...

The fact that acronyms are on their way out in xhtml2.0,
coupled with the fact that it's futile - in my mind anyway -
to argue vehemently over semantics down to this level, considering
that HTML itself has such a kludgey, ambiguous and incomplete set
of tags anyway (consider DL for instance), would suggest to 
just forget about it. One man's acronym is another man's abbreviation
(but not the other way around). Every acronym could also be marked
up as an abbreviation, without losing too much semantic weight...

(but yes, of course, IE's lack of real support for abbr is a problem
in this case)

Patrick

Patrick H. Lauke
Webmaster / University of Salford
http://www.salford.ac.uk

> -Original Message-
> From: Justin French
> Sent: 22 July 2004 14:09
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: [WSG] Titles Acronyms Abbr etc
> 
> 
> On 21/07/2004, at 4:10 PM, Bert Doorn wrote:
> 
> > G'day
> >
> >>  Looks distinctly like a case of totally unnecessary to me 
> but we have
> >>  a difference of opinion in the office...
> >
> > Even if it was written as VDS, it would be an abbr(eviation):  > title="Vent Door Systems">VDS
> 
> Actually, VDS is an acronym of Vent Door Systems, not an abbreviation.
> 
> ---
> Justin French
> http://indent.com.au
> 
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RE: [WSG] semantic way to mark up form help?

[Patrick Lauke]

Maybe a slight stretch, but how about wrapping these related elements
(label, input, etc) up in their own fieldset, and using the legend
for that text (thus associating it with the (input and label within).



This is the title of your news post
(does not accept HTML input)
...




Other suggestion: use a title on the input



To be honest, I wouldn't get too overly worried about getting the semantics
exactly right in this case, mainly because HTML is a flawed language with very
few general (and a few overly specific) elements with defined semantic meaning
and relationship. Anything that falls outside of that is always going to be a rough
approximation - trying to squeeze the requirement of semantics encountered in the 
real-world
into the small, restricitve slots provided by the existing spec. (then again, you could
create your own DTD that adds your own nice custom explanation element to the current
set ;) )

Patrick

Patrick H. Lauke
Webmaster / University of Salford
http://www.salford.ac.uk

> -Original Message-
> From: Justin French 
> Sent: 22 July 2004 15:25
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [WSG] semantic way to mark up form help?
> 
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm trying to decide on a nice semantic way to mark-up a 
> short (usually 
> only a few words) block of help text in the context of a web form.  I 
> currently use a label to label the input, and a paragraph or div to 
> mark-up the help text:
> 
> 
>   
>   ...
>   
>   This is the title of your news 
> post, which does not 
> accept HTML input
>   
> 
> 
> But logic tells me that in the above example, the  help 
> text is not 
> associated with the form widget or the label at all.  The only way I 
> can see this being done is by including the help text in the 
> label, but 
> this will restrict me in terms of layouts.
> 
> Honestly, the most logical way I can see to do this is to 
> have them in 
> three cells of a table row, since at least they'll be associated in a 
> row.  's would also be nice, but they're intended for 
> groupings of form elements, and using them for each text input seems 
> like a load of bloat.
> 
> I've been looking at many examples of "correct, semantic forms", but 
> can't see anything like this out there.
> 
> TIA
> 
> ---
> Justin French
> http://indent.com.au
> 
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RE: [WSG] After CSS?

[Patrick Lauke]

Mike, nicely worded, if a bit convoluted.
May I suggest WCAG checkpoint 14.1 ;)


> -Original Message-
> From: Mike Pepper
> Sent: 23 July 2004 13:07
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: RE: [WSG] After CSS?
> 
> 
> Accessibility. Extend your skillsets with an understanding of 
> the challenges
> faced by impaired users, whether physically or cerebrally 
> impaired. The
> practical upshot of such consideration for fellow users is the market
> expansion afforded yourself and clients as you penetrate and 
> take hold of
> these markets.
> 
> Mike Pepper
> Accessible Web Developer
> www.seowebsitepromotion.com
> 
> GAWDS Administrator
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> www.gawds.org
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RE: [WSG] Web Accessability, SEO, Bookmarking - mod_rewrite

[Patrick Lauke]

> If you are using  from day one
> you only need to change the path within one tag.

But you still need to do it for every page in your site that uses it...
So we are comparing the merit of making find/replaces site wide for
all links vs. find/replace site wide for a specific tag.

Or am I missing something?

Patrick

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RE: [WSG] Smooth fonts with CSS

[Patrick Lauke]

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/dynatext/

> -Original Message-
> From: Olajide Olaolorun [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: 30 July 2004 09:57
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: [WSG] Smooth fonts with CSS
> 
> 
> hmmm I know just what I can do.
> 
> I could probaly use a little PHP and GD2 to make it an image 
> instead which 
> would b perfect
> 
> hmmm///  :)
> Thanks guys
> 
> 
> - Original Message - 
> From: "Mark Harwood" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Friday, July 30, 2004 4:17 AM
> Subject: Re: [WSG] Smooth fonts with CSS
> 
> 
> > You mean to Anti-Alias them...
> >
> > Sadly there no way you can do this just thru CSS, you could use
> > Shaun Inmann's Flash Replacement Trick, which scans you 
> code and replaces
> > what you select with Flash
> >
> > http://www.shauninman.com/mentary/past/ifr_revisited_and_revised.php
> >
> > Ive used it on many projects and its great!
> >
> >
> > *
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> > for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
> > *
> >
> >
> 
> 
> ---
> Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
> Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
> Version: 6.0.732 / Virus Database: 486 - Release Date: 7/29/2004 
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RE: [WSG] Fixed vs flexible layouts

[Patrick Lauke]

I'd argue that the best compromise are elastic layouts, where things
are positioned and sized in relation to other factors like font size.

To say that if we just set our width to 100% or something
and rejoice that the site will work in all sizes is misguided;
there will always be extremes at both ends of the spectrum (really
large desktop sizes, really tiny handheld displays) which will need a
complete rethink. 

As for "can I claim AA", I'd say the most pragmatic approach would be
- and I know I keep banging on about it, but hear me out once more -
to create separate stylesheets, a "designery" one (with fixed/elastic
layout, pastel colours, small-ish font size, all that stuff) and a
more accessible one (flexbile layout, higher contrast, slightly large
font sizes, etc) and a clear, simple, and obviously accessible mechanism
to switch between them. A bit like the "if you can't make it accessible,
offer an accessible alternative" idea (and certainly a lot better than
"text only" versions).

And going back to the problem of extremes (ultra large/ultra small displays),
I could envisage a few more stylesheets available..."lightweight" (which could
also be set to media="handheld" for instance (if any of those little bleeders
actually support/understand it), "widescreen", "tv" (again, couple with a media="tv"
attribute)...

(to muddy the waters further, there's also, in my mind, an issue of 
adapting the content itself to the context; if I'm using a browser on a small mobile
phone and access, say, a cinema website, I don't care about the flash intro, the
sections about the history of that particular company, etc...I'm just after a quick
way to check times when movies are playing; the context is different, my purpose is
different, and possibly the site should be different - maybe as a separate domain,
or in any case showing a different view into the same data that is more tailored
to that specific situation. heck, I'm digressing quite badly here)

But yes, my personal opinion, worth about GBP0.02 or less :)

Patrick

Patrick H. Lauke
Webmaster / University of Salford
http://www.salford.ac.uk

> -Original Message-
> From: Andy Budd [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: 30 July 2004 10:47
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [WSG] Fixed vs flexible layouts
> 
> 
> Hi folks,
> 
> Everybody has an opinion on fixed vs flexible layouts. Some people 
> prefer how fixed width sites look, and there is little doubt 
> that they 
> are easier to build. Others hate the whitespace around fixed width 
> designs, thinking they look ridiculous on large monitors.
> 
> For a site to get a AA accessibility rating, you are supposed to use 
> relative units (%, em) rather than fixed units (px). However the WAI 
> guidelines do say that, if you use fixed units, you must make 
> sure that 
> your site is usable.
> 
> Personal preferences aside, what "accessibility" problems to 
> people see 
> with fixed width layouts and what are the scale of these problems. 
> Could the same arguments hold true for "elastic layouts" 
> (layouts based 
> on ems) and do "flexible layouts" (those based on %) have their own 
> accessibility issues?
> 
> Is it acceptable for the vast majority of fixed width CSS based sites 
> to claim AA compliance if all other priority 1 and 2 checkpoints are 
> met?
> 
> Andy Budd
> 
> http://www.message.uk.com/
> 
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RE: [WSG] Hacks

[Patrick Lauke]

> From: Andy Budd
[snip]
> So I'm interested to hear what you folks think. Do you hack 
> or are you 
> hack free?

Pretty much hack free here as well. Only thing I may use occasionally
is using import to hide things from generation 4 browsers (and
occasionally exploiting the flawed handling of single quote
@import 'blah.css' statements to hide things from IE5/Mac)

Maybe I'm just not pushing the envelope far enough to find myself
in situations where hacks are unavoidable...

Patrick

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RE: [WSG] Fixed vs flexible layouts

[Patrick Lauke]

> From: Geoff Deering
[snip]
> If you are designing for handheld you should be considering 
> display:none for
> the none content columns, header and footer and just be using the link
> element for prev, next, etc.  Some sort of minimalist 
> approach may be more
> appropriate for that media.

actually, I'd go even further than that and say that this is
a case in which we may need completely different sites (or entry points
to the same information) depending on user preference - using something
like XSLT, or in any case some hefty-ish server-side system. Then,
you could serve targetted content for those who wish to have a minimalist
view, or more media rich version for those who want it.

before anybody jumps up and down and scream bloody murder: i'm not talking
about browser sniffing, but about having two or more version of the
site (ideally all powered by the same content) to allow "modal" access
to information.

yes, you can just display:none, but particularly considering handhelds,
mobile phones, etc, you're still sending the data, wasting bandwidth, in
an environment where it may well be a scarce commodity (and/or expensive...
imagine being charged by the kilobyte or something)

just thoughts,

P

Patrick H. Lauke
Webmaster / University of Salford
http://www.salford.ac.uk
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RE: [WSG] Hacks

[Patrick Lauke]

Just to pipe in on one small detail I noticed (not just in this
message, but I'll piggy back onto it here)

> Normally I would say avoid using hacks by taking time to 
> build the css 
> properly,

It's often not just the CSS that needs to be changed to work
properly, but it's a case of revisiting the markup, maybe 
re-arranging things ever so slightly, being a bit more specific,
adding a few "hooks" here in there (without affecting the
semantics/structure...this could mean using DIVs and SPANs within
reason, or doing changes like
blah
to
blah
just so that you have an extra container/block level element to
work with)

If the (X)HTML is rubbish/convoluted to begin with, it's then a
nightmare to style consistently. Although in theory CSS should
be able to do everything, it's often a case of producing markup
that is conducive to the particular styling you're trying to achieve.

No, not advocating the practice of swamping everything with 
DIVs and SPANs, but there are certainly many different ways to mark
something up in a semantically sound way, and often only one of those
ways lends itself to being styled a particular way.

Patrick

Patrick H. Lauke
Webmaster / University of Salford
http://www.salford.ac.uk
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RE: [WSG] Form labels

[Patrick Lauke]

Firefox never had any problems with labels in my experience. It sounds more like your 
problem is the javascript? (at least I'm assuming that's what you mean when you talk 
about populating the fields)

Do you have a URL we can have a look at?

Patrick H. Lauke

> -Original Message-
> From: Wasabi [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: 16 August 2004 14:46
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [WSG] Form labels
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> After completing a form with labels, as suggested in a usability 
> guideline I noticed firefox choked on them. None of the text fields 
> would populate until I removed the labels from them. Could some one 
> point me to a specification on proper implementation of labels.
> 
> 
> C
> 
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RE: [WSG] DOM setAttribute in IE?

[Patrick Lauke]

I'd suggest using Scott Andrews' addEvent helper function
(see http://www.scottandrew.com/weblog/articles/cbs-events)

function addEvent(obj, evType, fn, useCapture){
  if (obj.addEventListener){
obj.addEventListener(evType, fn, useCapture);
return true;
  } else if (obj.attachEvent){
var r = obj.attachEvent("on"+evType, fn);
return r;
  } else {
alert("Handler could not be attached");
  }
}

This has worked for me quite consistently in the past.

Patrick

Patrick H. Lauke
Webmaster / University of Salford
http://www.salford.ac.uk
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RE: [WSG] Flash in Windows Mozilla 1.6

[Patrick Lauke]

Does it use features specific to Flash7, and Browser Cam only has
6? (as I don't use Browser Cam I'm not sure if that last bit actually
applies, but thought I'd throw that in as a potential cause)

Work for me anyway on Win2k/Moz1.6/Flash7

Patrick

Patrick H. Lauke
Webmaster / University of Salford
http://www.salford.ac.uk

> -Original Message-
> From: Wasabi [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: 23 August 2004 15:37
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [WSG] Flash in Windows Mozilla 1.6
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> My site's FLASH document is not displaying in Windows XP 
> Mozilla 1.6 as 
> viewed at Browser Cam. Any suggestions why this is occuring.
> 
> 
> Respectfully,
> Chris
> 
> http://ckimedia.com
> 
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> 
> 
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RE: [WSG] PHP is stopping my page validating as xhtml 1.0 Strict

[Patrick Lauke]

As already mentioned, it's due to the url rewriter. You need to
get it to write the session id inside a fieldset, and not directly
in the form.

So: add a fieldset around your form's content and then have a look at
http://uk.php.net/manual/en/ref.session.php#ini.url-rewriter.tags.

As I don't have access to php.ini, and my host doesn't allow
changes to PHP via .htaccess, I've resorted to solving the issue on
a site I was working on directly in PHP, by calling the following at
the start of each page

ini_set('url_rewriter.tags',"a=href,area=href,frame=src,fieldset=");

Obviously, if you can get it changed in php.ini, that makes it even less of a pain...

Patrick

Patrick H. Lauke
Webmaster / University of Salford
http://www.salford.ac.uk

> -Original Message-
> From: Steven Clark [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: 25 August 2004 09:40
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [WSG] PHP is stopping my page validating as xhtml 1.0 Strict
> 
> 
> I've got a page with a small logon form, nothing major. It 
> has a couple of 
> small hurdles for validating as XHTML 1.0 strict though.
> 
> The first is that XHTML doesn't support the name attribute, 
> so of course my 
> php that processes this login feature won't work with id 
> instead of name. Is 
> there something in PHP that I don't know about? Well in 
> JavaScript I'd just 
> have used the id attribute and then getElementById() in the 
> script. But does 
> PHP have this ability? Or am I just in a pickle of having to 
> put up with it 
> because its the way it is. What is the alternative to using 
> name if you want 
> to use PHP?
> 
> Secondly, the page won't validate as XHTML 1.0 strict because 
> of something 
> in the said php code. Mmmm.
> 
>   http://blog.lindenlangdon.com/prototype/
> 
> The php code is
>$username = strip_tags(trim($_POST['username']));
> $password = strip_tags(trim($_POST['password']));
> 
> 
>   if (isset($logon)) // if login is pressed
> {
>// open the database 
> and check if the user exists
>
> include("level/include/dbfuncs.inc");
>$link = connectToDatabase();
>if(!link)
>{
> print 
> "database connection error";
> 
> mysql_close($link);
>   exit();
>}
> 
>// run a query to get 
> all of the user and password combinations
>$query = "select * 
> from member where  username = \"$username\" && 
> password = \"$password\"";
>$result = mysql_query($query);
> 
> 
>// if one set matches
>  if (mysql_num_rows($result)== 1)
>{
>   
> header("location: level/form/submission.php");  // go to 
> submission.php
>}
>else
>{
>header("location: index.php");  // go to 
> index.php again
>}
>   }
> 
> ---
> 
> Any advice on this one would be greatly appreciated thanx. Its got me 
> stumped.
> 
> Steven Clark
> www.nortypig.com
> www.blog.nortypig.com
> 
> _
> All only $4! Get the latest mobile tones, images and logos:   
> http://fun.mobiledownloads.com.au/191191/index.wl
> 
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RE: [WSG] navigation problem

[Patrick Lauke]

It's 
your logo which is overlapping the navigation with its padding. Effectively, 
there's invisible space over the navigation, making the links 
unclickable.
 
The 
solution would be something like
 
/* to 
give the positioning later on a point of reference */
#container { position: relative;}
 
/* and 
now just stick the logo in the bottom right corner of its parent, #container 
*/
#logo {position: 
absolute;bottom:0;right:0;}
 
Only 
tested in Firefox 0.9, as I can't be arsed ;)
 
Patrick
Patrick H. LaukeWebmaster / 
University of Salfordhttp://www.salford.ac.uk 

  -Original Message-From: BWORX - Bram Janssens 
  [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]Sent: 31 August 2004 12:43To: 
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]Subject: [WSG] navigation 
  problem
  
  Hello,
   
  This is my first 
  post!
   
  I’m redesigning my site. You can 
  find a test on http://www.bworx.be/test/test1.html.
  There is a problem with the 
  navigation in Mozilla, Opera, Netscape, … (Not in Explorer). 
  
  You can not click on the links in 
  the navigation and the link in the content in some 
  browsers.
   
  You find the CSS file: http://www.bworx.be/test/css/basic.css.
   
  I think the XHTML and CSS code is 
  valid! 
   
   
  Who can help 
  me?
   
  Other remarks are also 
  welcome!
   
   
  Greetings,
  Bram
   
  BWORX - Webdesign & 
  Development
   
  Bram 
  Janssens
  www.bworx.be
   
   

RE: [WSG] web essentials briefing/ westciv CSS Guide

[Patrick Lauke]

> From: Andy Budd 

> Web Essentials 04 looks like is turning out to be one killer event. I 
> wish it was a little closer to home so I could make it.

Yup, same thoughts here...

Patrick

Patrick H. Lauke
Webmaster / University of Salford
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RE: [WSG] Horizontal Scroll

[Patrick Lauke]

Keeping in mind that overflow-x was originally an IE only proprietary extension, which 
has since found its way into the CSS3 draft, meaning that most non-IE browsers at this 
point don't support it. Firefox, for instance, doesn't work with the example you give 
(although I hear that a recent alpha build of Mozilla 1.8 has had this feature added, 
and it will slowly find its way into the FF nightlies)

Patrick

Patrick H. Lauke
Webmaster / University of Salford
http://www.salford.ac.uk

> -Original Message-
> From: Mark | Carbon Chip [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: 06 September 2004 15:59
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: RE: [WSG] Horizontal Scroll
> 
> 
> Use overflow-x: scroll
> 
> With inline CSS an example would be:
> 
> Latinlatinlatinlatinlatinlatin latin latin
> 
> Mark
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RE: [WSG] Does "display:none" work on img replacements?

[Patrick Lauke]

display:none has been discourages early on in the whole image
replacement discussion, as it completely hides the element
from screen readers.

Patrick

> -Original Message-
> From: Lorenzo Gabba @ Quirk [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: 08 September 2004 14:52
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [WSG] Does "display:none" work on img replacements?
> 
> 
> | CSS |
> 
> h1
> {
> background: url(widget-image.gif) no-repeat;
> }
> 
> h1 span
> {
> display: none;
> }
> 
> | HTML |
> 
> Buy widgets
> 
> | Question |
> 
> Is this an acceptable alternative to #5 on:
> http://www.evolt.org/article/Ten_CSS_tricks_you_may_not_know/1
7/60369/index.html
... or will search engines ignore the contents of the span tag?
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RE: [WSG] I need advice with following font size standards and IE

[Patrick Lauke]

Hardline reply: the onus is, at least in part, on the user. She needs to
learn about the browser's settings, and if she's got the font size set to
"smallest" in her browser, well then...she shouldn't really complain.
Having said that, you can use absolute sizes xx-small, x-small, small,
large, x-large, xx-large which should never fall below a certain size,
even when set to "smallest".

Patrick

> -Original Message-
> From: dunk [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: 14 September 2004 09:26
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [WSG] I need advice with following font size standards and IE
> 
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I know by now the very strict rule of avoiding "px" font 
> sizing as much as 
> possible because IE will not size them up or down, but I'm 
> finding an awful 
> lot of people are using IE in the smaller and small size 
> settings and not 
> even knowing about it.  In fact I had one guy tell me I should be 
> redesigning a website he regularly visits because it's too 
> small and on 
> inspection I realised they were following the standards, its 
> just that he 
> had his IE set on text-size:smaller.  My own IE opens as a default on 
> smaller (its very frustrating)
> 
> The smaller settings seem irrelevant to most webpages, I have 
> never gone to 
> my netscape zoom and scaled a website down, because there's 
> almost never 
> any reason to.
> 
> So my question is, how do you design a website that will look 
> compact and 
> nice at a normal size, BUT -will not be tiny in IE for those 
> who don't 
> realise they have it set to small AND doesn't break the 
> standard.  I'm very 
> tempted to stick a fixed font size at the start of my 
> stylesheet.  Is there 
> another way?
> 
> Thanks guys, this is really bugging me.
> 
> Duncan
> 
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RE: [WSG] WYSIWYG Editors

[Patrick Lauke]

www.editize.com offers solid performance and (despite its limited support for any but 
the most common xhtml elements) value for money, if you don't mind the fact that it's 
a java applet.

Patrick

> -Original Message-
> From: Olajide Olaolorun [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: 16 September 2004 12:11
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [WSG] WYSIWYG Editors
> 
> 
> Hi, I was wondering if any one knows a free WYSIWYG Editor that works
> with both IE and Firefox or Mozilla... or any other browser.
> 
> The ones I have been seeing only work with IE
> 
> Please help...
> 
> -- 
> Personal &Hobby:
> www.olajideolaolorun.com
> www.empirex.net
> 
> Business & Projects:
> www.tripleolabs.com
> www.tripleostudios.com
> www.uniformserver.com
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RE: [WSG] Moz vs. FF

[Patrick Lauke]

A bit off topic perhaps, but:

I'd suggest always starting with a fresh profile when installing
a new version of FF. Export your bookmarks, make a note of any
passwords etc you may have, write down which extensions you
absolutely need...then download the new version, start it from
the command line with firefox.exe -p to force the profile manager,
and set up a new virgin profile.

What I did when FF1.0PR came out was to keep 0.9 still installed,
to use it in the interim period while extensions were being repackaged
and updated to work with 1.0PR. I simply had two shortcuts on my
desktop, and changed the actual target of the shortcut to load the
relevant executable plus selecting the right profile, e.g.

"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox 1.0PR\firefox.exe" -profile "C:\Browser 
Profiles\Firefox 1.0PR"

and

"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox 0.9\firefox.exe" -profile "C:\Browser 
Profiles\Firefox 0.9"

Now that 1.0PR has all the extensions I need, and seems to run fairly stable,
I deleted FF 0.9 and the related profile.

Saves a lot of hassle in the long run...IMHO anyway.

Patrick

> -Original Message-
> From: Chris Rizzo [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: 17 September 2004 14:46
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: RE: [WSG] Moz vs. FF
> 
> 
> 
> Reinstalling Web Dev after installing 1.0 PR worked for me 
> too. I found this
> true of a handful of extensions. Most of the more popular 
> extensions seemed
> to still work. Try running the extension updates again after 
> the install.
> 
> Chris
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
> Behalf Of Dan Webb
> Sent: Friday, September 17, 2004 9:31 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: [WSG] Moz vs. FF
> 
> It tells you that but it lies.  Ive got it working on 1.0PR by just
> reinstalling
> it after installing 1.0PR.
> 
> Quoting Tom Livingston <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> 
> > Current version of Web Dev extention is incompatible with 
> FF 1.0PR...
> > 
> > 
> > Tom Livingston
> > Senior Multimedia Artist
> > mlinc.com
> > 
> > Get FireFox >  
http://spreadfirefox.com/community/?q=affiliates&id=0&t=1
> 
> 
> 


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RE: [WSG] Embedding Flash

[Patrick Lauke]

> > I'd remind you to replace some of the alt tags though 
> (intro1.jpg etc).
> 
> The client controls those. I'll remind them to make their alt tags
> accessible.

They're attributes...ATTRIBUTES...not tags!

Sorry, bit of a rant. Feel better now ;)

Patrick
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RE: [WSG] Semantics of Breadcrumb "you are here" links

[Patrick Lauke]

Option 3 for me, on the grounds that yes, it's a list, but that the
order of the list items is important (as it effectively denotes a
step-by-step path from the site's home page to the current page, and
these steps need to be taken in that particular order). It's this
hierarchy inherent in the ordering which, to me, is missing in both
UL and the various DDs of a DL.

Patrick

> -Original Message-
> From: Gavin Cooney [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: 15 October 2004 09:43
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [WSG] Semantics of Breadcrumb "you are here" links
> 
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> Apologies if this has been asked on WSG before, but I was wondering
> the general opinion on the most correct semantic way of coding
> breadcrumb trails.
> 
> There's many webpages dealing with this:
> 
> http://www.simplebits.com/notebook/2004/02/23/sqxii_conclusion.html
> http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=mozclient&ie=utf-8&oe=ut
> f-8&q=semantic+breadcrumb
> 
> I've seen arguements for: 
> 
> 1.  list 
> 2. Nested  list 
> Several lists nested (seems like a bit of a pain to me)
> 
>  Home
>   
>Articles
> 
>  Title
> 
>
>   
>  
> 
> 3.  ordered list 
> I suppose if it's a list at all, it's an ordered list? 
> 4.  definition list 
> such as used in this page http://www.baekdal.com/example.asp
> (actually this is a good example of using s for everything)
> 
> At the moment i've been just putting them in a 
> or  and putting a "/" or ">" etc between each
> link. This is not perfect, i know.
> 
> So what do you think? How do you do your breadcrumbs? 
> 
> Gav
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RE: [WSG] Yahoo CSS'ing

[Patrick Lauke]

Weird indeed. From home, I see the new table-less design. From work here, it's still 
the old one...

Patrick

> -Original Message-
> From: Tony Crockford [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: 30 September 2004 09:15
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: [WSG] Yahoo CSS'ing
> 
> 
> I'm a bit confused, if I go to http://www.yahoo.com/ I'm 
> still seeing the  
> tabled version.
> 
> have they got some clever locale sniffing going on or what?
> 
> (I'm in the UK)
> 
> -- 
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RE: [WSG] Why wont this validate

[Patrick Lauke]

You need to move  inside a block level 
element (in your case, move it into the fieldset which immediately follows it). Also, 
as it's an empty element, you need to make it self-closing


Patrick

> -Original Message-
> From: Kim Kruse [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: 04 October 2004 16:54
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [WSG] Why wont this validate
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I'm doing server side validating on a form and I get some 
> errors I'm not 
> able to decrypt.
> 
> So if someone have the time to take a look here 
> http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A//www.mouse
riders.dk/kontakt.php%3Fsubmitted%3D1%26afsnavn%3D%26afsemail%3D%> 
26afstelefon%3D%26afskommentar%3D
> and please tell me what the errors means. I don t understand why a 
> hidden field should be wrapped in  tags for instance?
> 
> Please be patient... I'm learning :o)
> 
> Kim
> 
> 
> 
> 
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RE: [WSG] please help validate

[Patrick Lauke]

Stefan,

crashes such as the one on your site are usually caused by something in the CSS that 
IE doesn't like. I didn't get a chance to actually look through it, but I'd suggest 
commenting out your different blocks in the stylesheet, one at a time, and trying to 
isolate the problem that way.

Patrick

> -Original Message-
> From: stefan sick | cialog [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: 06 October 2004 15:39
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [WSG] please help validate
> 
> 
> help needed because i encountered a strange problem.
> please could you help me hunt this error down:
> 
> my homepage http://www.cialog.com/
> crashes on Windows IE and i've got no idea why
> 
> the code validates xhtml 1.0 trans and css and looks fine
> in safari, firefox ... but random crashes on IE PC occur
> 
> can you reproduce these crashes ?
> does someone have an idea why this happens ?
> 
> thanks a thousand times in advance !
> 
> stefan
> 
> cialog | corporate interactive design
> stefan sick
> reinsburgstrasse 128/1 | 70197 stuttgart | germany
> fon +49 711 28044-20 | fax +49 711 28044-22
> 
> http://www.cialog.com/
> [ the only constant in life is change ]
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RE: [WSG] Semantics of Breadcrumb "you are here" links

[Patrick Lauke]

> -Original Message-
> From: Ryan Nichols 

> Really a browser doesn't understand what any of the tags are. What you
> see are only the browsers default behavior at rendering certain items
> it's aware of in the DTD. This was all put in by whoever made the
> browser, and is totally up to the browser. Default renderings are not
> specified in W3C. This is the forward view of browser-to-document
> relationships. All these default behaviors can be overridden by
> supplying your own rendering rules (css).

You missed my point, but maybe it was just me being cryptic. I'm not talking
about the *visual rendering* (default or otherwise, which yes of course can be
changed to your heart's content via CSS).

What I mean by *understand* is that certain elements trigger behaviours that
go well beyond the mere visual aspects, and particularly in conjunction with
assistive technology etc you need to stick to an established, agreed syntax.

An example:

let's say I dream up my own custom DTD which defines the elements ARTICLETITLE
and ARTICLESTRAPLINE. I define some CSS to make them *visually* render like H1 and H2
would by default. Great, appearance wise it works as it should (in modern browsers
anyway). However, if I'm using a screenreader on top of my OS, and - on a page using
this custom DTD - I select the outline view (which lists the document structure by
looking at the headings), I get back nothing because the browser and screenreader
do not *understand* that ARTICLETITLE and ARTICLESTRAPLINE are structural elements
that effectively denote headings for sections on the page.

The same kind of thing would also apply, of course, to search engines: they would
accept your custom elements (heck, they wouldn't care at all of course), but would
treat them as they would any other plain text, not adding any extra weighting to
anything because it's a title/heading/etc simply because they don't understand the
custom elements defined in the DTD.

*That's* what I'm going on about. Visually, yes...you can do whatever you want with
your own elements. But for them to actually be useful, they need to stick to an
agreed syntax whose rules (for all intents and purposes) have been hardcoded into
a browser or user agent.

Patrick

Patrick H. Lauke
Webmaster
External Relations Division 
Faraday House 
University of Salford 
Greater Manchester 
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