Re: [WSG] Strange character encoding issue
Never had a problem with character encodings on
web pages, but since I reinstalled the OS on my
iMac I have had an issue.
Some of my characters, especially when using '
seem to mess up. This is the page, content and
layout are simple as it's for a uni assignment:
http://mi-linux.wlv.ac.uk/~0802390/overview.htmlhttp://mi-linux.wlv.ac.uk/~0802390/overview.html
Check out the overview.html page, and notice the
issues. There is one noticeable in the overview
page â¤SOAPâ¤
Any ideas?
(for those interested I do plan to publish a
website regarding the Semantic Web shortly).
James,
Running your page through the W3 Validator
(validator.w3.org) gives the following response:
Error line 5 7 , C o l u m n 2 0 : n o n
S G M L c h a r a c t e r n u m b e r
1 4 5 .
t h e k e y w o r d
ë S O A P í i n a s e a r c h
e n g i n e w i l l r e t u r n
r e s u l t s
You have used an illegal character in your text.
HTML uses the standard UNICODE Consortium
(http://www.unicode.org/) character repertoire,
and it leaves undefined (among others) 65
character codes (0 to 31 inclusive and 127 to 159
inclusive) that are sometimes used for
typographical quote marks and similar in
proprietary character sets. The validator has
found one of these undefined characters in your
document. The character may appear on your
browser as a curly quote, or a trademark symbol,
or some other fancy glyph; on a different
computer, however, it will likely appear as a
completely different character, or nothing at all.
Your best bet is to replace the character with
the nearest equivalent ASCII character, or to use
an appropriate character entity
(http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html3/latin1.html).
For more information on Character Encoding on the
web, see Alan Flavell's excellent HTML Character
Set Issues/a reference
(http://web.archive.org/web/20060425191748/ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/charset/).
End of quote.
I always recommend people use UTF-8 because it's
a much larger character set than ISO-8859-1. I
also recommend use of XHTML Transitional rather
than HTML DTD's.
On a side note, I like your page, very
attractive. But I found the 1, 2, 3, ... buttons
at the top confusing because I kept trying to
click the number. Then I tried clicking the blue
text, both of which produced nothing. Finally my
cursor wandered over the black text and I
realized it was the link. Perhaps underlining
that link or making it dynamic like the button
would prevent the confusion I encountered. On the
other hand, perhaps I just need another cup of
coffee!
Peace,
-Tim
--
Tim Offenstein *** Campus Accessibility Liaison *** (217) 244-2700
CITES Departmental Services *** www.uiuc.edu/goto/offenstein
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Re: [WSG] Accessible menu lists - using the pipe character as separator?
Hello all I can't seem to find a definitive answer on this via Google - is it best practice to use something like the pipe character ( | ) to separate links in a menu so that screenreader software pauses between the list items? Any recommended articles dealing with accessible menus in general? Daisy Hi Daisy, As the others have said, best practice would be to use a UL for your list of links. If you want a visual separator, the border property in CSS will work best but there's no need to provide a separator for the sake of screen reading software. A very beneficial best practice that's recommended here at the University of Illinois is to proceed all navigational lists with a header tag, usually a h2 or h3. That way disabled users can go directly to the navigation via a list of headers. Also the header alerts them to the purpose of the list since, as David mentioned, screen reading software will announce the list but the only thing it says is, unordered list, 5 items. If a header disturbs your layout, then it's recommended that you hide it visually by absolute positioning off the top of the page using CSS. -Tim -- Tim Offenstein *** Campus Accessibility Liaison *** (217) 244-2700 CITES Departmental Services *** www.uiuc.edu/goto/offenstein *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Uppercase Tag Names
I am at university at the moment, and they said to use uppercase text for tag names and lowercase for attributes. I have to do it because otherwise I will lose a mark. I disagreed (because it makes the source hard to read) but he said you need to so that you can conform to HTML 4.01. I think this a case of someone reading far to deep into the specs. I didn't really want to argue with him because he assumes I know nothing. I do know that the source code has become difficult to read using that method. James, I think you're right to disagree, particularly since HTML 4.01 does not specify case (and besides the fact that HTML 4.01 is suppose to be the precursor to XHTML which *does* specify case for code). Ironically I used to code entirely in uppercase with the rationale that it made the code easier to differentiate from content. I would base my argument on the specifications of XHTML which is the newer, more modern DTD. Why train ourselves to use outdated methods? My .02. -Tim -- Tim Offenstein *** Campus Accessibility Liaison *** (217) 244-2700 CITES Departmental Services *** www.uiuc.edu/goto/offenstein *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Question about accessibility
At 6:37 AM -0400 8/27/08, Jason Pruim wrote: Good Morning everyone! I have a client that wants me to write his navigation mostly as a picture and then use image maps to get to the actual links. I am wondering, how would I go about convincing my client that this isn't the best way to do it? I personally think that some nice text links, styled properly with CSS would look just as good if not better then image maps. Oh, and to put it into context, it's a picture rating site so I don't know that Blind users are going to be too much of a concern for him since they can't see what the main part of the site is for. Just to clarify, strictly speaking in terms of accessibility, if redundant text links are provided elsewhere on the page, image maps are not a hindrance to blind users because they have an alternate method of navigating. But of course the many excellent suggestions regarding a more efficient way of coding the site are definitely the way to go. Besides, images maps are a royal pain to maintain. -Tim -- Tim Offenstein *** Campus Accessibility Liaison *** (217) 244-2700 CITES Departmental Services *** www.uiuc.edu/goto/offenstein *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Character Encoding Mismatch
At 1:16 PM -0700 4/4/08, Kristine Cummins wrote: Can someone tell me how to fix this W3C warning - I'm new to understanding this part. http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.beverlywilson.com%2Fhttp://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.beverlywilson.com%2F Thanks! In the header of your HTML should be a line like this - meta http-equiv=Content-Type content=text/html; charset=utf-8 /. Your server is sending an HTTP header that tells browsers to use the ISO-8859-1 character set, hence the mismatch. You can fix it by changing the line in your HTML to charset=iso-8859-1. However I always recommend instead using utf-8 because it's broader. ISO-8859-1 is actually a subset of utf-8. You'll have to talk to your server admin to change the HTTP header I believe. -Tim -- Tim Offenstein *** Campus Accessibility Liaison *** (217) 244-2700 CITES Departmental Services *** www.uiuc.edu/goto/offenstein *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] nest heading properly
My question isn't about how to nest headings properly E823 - 1 instance(s): Heading elements must be ordered properly. For example, in HTML H2 elements should follow H1 elements, H3 elements should follow H2 elements, etc. Developers should not skip levels (e.g., H1 directly to H3). Do not use headings to create font effects. See http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10-HTML-TECHS/#document-headers (displayed in new window). I am curious how much benefit it goes to accessibility. What ill effect it has on assistive user agents if headings are not nested properly. Semantically, I fully understand the need for proper order of heading elements, but in real world practice, I have yet noticing any site that follow this to the letter, and it's more than a challenge for a complicated columned layout that designer tends to use h3 for every bold text title. Hi Tee, At the University of Illinois, we use a tool called the Functional Accessibility Evaluator (FAE - http://fae.cita.uiuc.edu) that checks for proper header nesting. My understanding is that misuse or improperly nested headings will be confusing to screen reader users when they may be lead to thinking they missed a section head or something. I agree this issue can become a real challenge in terms of source order. -Tim *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Site review
I'm almost done with a site redesign, and the time is right to ask for your opinions: http://beta.www.aclib.ushttp://beta.www.aclib.us for comparison, the current site is: http://www.aclib.ushttp://www.aclib.us I'm aiming for HTML 4.01 Strict compliance, and am periodically running the W3C Validator, so no need to notify me of validation errors. Just curious why you chose HTML instead of XHTML. Personally I like XHTML 1.0 Transitional. Of course accessibility is important, and this is where your insights and criticisms can be especially helpful. Using the Functional Accessibility Evaluator (http://fae.cita.uiuc.edu), there are minor issues: 1. The best practice recommendation is that your H1 tag match you page title. 2. Your form control for the Search should have a label element associated with them. 3. Pretty good use of header mark up. In conjunction with this, it is generally recommended your Primary Navigation should be an unordered list rather than a definition list and should be preceded by a header tag. That way disabled users can navigate to the list by headers and therefore Skip nav links are not necessary. 4. The alt tag for the WebFeat jpg should have some content. 5. Use of the i tag (on African-American History Online), should be replaced with em. Use of the i tag is considered deprecated because it is more presentation markup than semantic. 6. Your page should declare a language type. This goes in the HTML element. Everything else looks good with the one caveat that the 36px for catSearchLabel is overkill. Besides the point that font-sizes should always be in ems or %.) Do you really want it to be that predominant? It also quickly overwhelms the page when the user has to bump up the other font sizes. Also if you do want it predominant, I suggest making Search a header tag rather than a styled paragraph. That way it maintains its importance when CSS is removed. One free tidbit - try the Firefox Accessibility Extension (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1891) This is a great toolbar for testing your page to see how accessible it is. Best regards, -Tim -- Tim Offenstein *** Campus Accessibility Liaison *** (217) 244-2700 CITES Departmental Services *** www.uiuc.edu/goto/offenstein *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Ideas for Corporate Presentation on Web Standards and Semantic Web
At 12:23 AM +0530 1/18/08, varun krishnan wrote: Hi All, I work for a company where there are about 1000 employees and We are mainly into Web Development. Im taking a presentation on Web Standards and the Semantic Web next week and I want make sure that I put across some really valuable info. Im a web developer and give a lot of importance to web standards. can any one you help me with wat i can talk about ? Hi Varun, You may want to mention that web standards help insure cross platform compatibility, not just with other desktop computers but also PDA's, cell phones, screen reading software, etc. Good luck on your presentation. -Tim -- Tim Offenstein *** Campus Accessibility Liaison *** (217) 244-2700 CITES Departmental Services *** www.uiuc.edu/goto/offenstein *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Site Check
At 2:30 PM -0800 12/20/07, CK wrote: http://working.bushidodeep.com/kevon/index.html Could use a once over for this site. any suggestions are welcome. CK Hi CK, A couple quick things: - No alt text on the holder.gif image. (line 28) - link rel=stylesheet href=c/core.css / needs a type attribute - i.e., type=text/css (line 5) - Add a lang attribute to the HTML opener - html xmlns=http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml; xml:lang=en (line 2) -Tim -- Tim Offenstein *** Campus Accessibility Liaison *** (217) 244-2700 CITES Departmental Services *** www.uiuc.edu/goto/offenstein *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] skip to content: care of accessibility causing usability
At 7:44 PM -0700 10/27/07, Tee G. Peng wrote: I am having an issue and I can't seem to see the whole picture objectively. Thanks to your influences, it has become my second nature to have 'skip to content' in every site I do (sites I have control over the design and layout); when I do markup coding, clients often ignore the 'skip to content' and 'skip to nav' - I managed to convinced them a couple times with a compromise to hide it from browsers by using 'display:none', because, according to them, only screen users need 'skip to content'. I am doing a site that I have control on design and layout, client asked to remove the 'skip to content' when I showed him the first layout, I tried to talk him out by stating how important it is to have the 'skip to content' implemented. He didn't buy it, so I came out with this technique: teesworks.com/ (move your mouse to the top to see the result). Hi Tee, I appreciate your desire to provide navigational accessibility for disabled users however Skip to content is not the best way to do it. Most disabled users, particularly sight impaired, will use your header markup to navigate the page rather than skip links. Most often the audience who need the skip nav functionality will be using an accessible browser like Firefox which allows them to display a header list whereby they can easily surf through a properly structured page which makes use of header tags. You've done a fairly good job on the teesworks page using header tags so the skip to content link is not going to serve much purpose. Also keep in mind that display:none and visibility:hidden remove content from screen readers. A screen reader will not pick up elements styled like that so unless that's your purpose, don't use those kinds of rules in your CSS for markup you intend for a screen reader. Nice page btw. -Tim -- Tim Offenstein *** Campus Accessibility Liaison *** (217) 244-2700 CITES Departmental Services *** www.uiuc.edu/goto/offenstein *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
[WSG] Problems validating with TIDY
I have a page I want to validate. W3C says it's valid XHTML Transitional but Tidy complains saying, line 96 column 1 - Warning: input ID __VIEWSTATE uses XML ID syntax. The page is http://www.provost.uiuc.eduwww.provost.uiuc.edu and because it has a XHTML DOCTYPE, I would think XML syntax should be just fine. I am advising on this page so I don't have access to the files to change anything but wanted to research the complaint before reporting it. Any ideas what TIDY's problem is saying. I thought preceding an ID with the double underscore might be the issue but would like a more technical explanation, particularly since W3C says it's valid. Thanks in advance. -Tim -- Tim Offenstein *** Campus Accessibility Liaison *** (217) 244-2700 CITES Departmental Services *** www.uiuc.edu/goto/offenstein *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Using target=_blank
So what argument should I give to my clients not to use target=_blank ? If I say that won't validate your page, they won't care. So any non-technical argument that I can give to them? Ryan The best non-technical argument I can think of is that this approach breaks the back button. Jakob Nielson argues against doing this over and over again. Opening a new window, particularly if the look and feel are similar, can be very confusing to your site visitors. -Tim -- Tim Offenstein *** College of Applied Health Sciences *** (217) 244-2700 CITES Departmental Services Web Specialist *** www.uiuc.edu/goto/offenstein *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
[WSG] Recommended screen size
Anyone have a recommendation on what size screen to use as a baseline when designing for a new site? 800x600 or 1024x768 or something else? Thanks in advance. -Tim -- Tim Offenstein *** College of Applied Health Sciences *** (217) 244-2700 CITES Departmental Services Web Specialist *** www.uiuc.edu/goto/offenstein *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] semantic HTML for intro text
Stay away from Strong. Strong is presentational, same as B, and I. Presentation should be in HTML and content in HTML. use span class=important for text that needs to be emphasised. I would argue to the contrary. Strong has much more meaning than a span class. The word /tag itself implies strength of content rather than a default appearance in a bowser, cf with the address tag which indicates an address, even though browser default appearance is italicised. I would also add that I believe assistive technologies such as screen readers interpret strong where as they would ignore a span. Therefore use of the HTML element strong has semantic meaning which should not be dismissed. -Tim -- Tim Offenstein *** College of Applied Health Sciences *** (217) 244-2700 CITES Departmental Services Web Specialist *** www.uiuc.edu/goto/offenstein *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
RE: [WSG] Simple to use page layout 'tool' ?
Subject: [WSG] Simple to use page layout 'tool' ? Apologies if this is slightly off topic, but I'm happy to re-post elsewhere. A client wants to be able to create some draft page layouts that they want achieved. Basically, they want a simple piece of software that they can use to drag drop things like buttons, lists, input fields etc onto a page in order to create an initial draft requirement. No functionality is needed - just the ability to create a draft layout and annotate things. For example there might be an arrow pointing to a button with a note that says 'the user clicks this to display a list of products' They can then submit it to us as a starting point. There's a prototyping tool called Denim (http://dub.washington.edu/denim/) which may be what you're looking for. It works best with a digital tablet and is designed for sketching a web interface. It will require 15-20 minutes of demonstration for your client to learn. That said, Chris's recommendation of a pen and legal pad is probably the best way to go. -Tim -- * Tim Offenstein - Web Specialist - CITES - AHS - 244-2700 * A cheerful heart is a good medicine Proverbs 17:22 NRSV *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
