I would like to ask your opinion here, if a web site logo should or not
link to the homepage.
Anecdotally, I've seen a lot of users who do click the logo -
especially if it's placed at the top left of the page. It's not a
standard, but it's a common design element which many users pick up
very
Or do we just dumb everything down until we have some small subset that
everyone understands?
I've often found the Nielsen goes too far - beyond make it more
usable, through to make it more stupid or even cater to such a low
common denominator that average users actually start to get
I never thought the day would come when there actually was a legitimate
use for pop-ups!
It's legitimate to use pop-ups, if a court judge orders you to :)
http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,18214048%5E15306%5E%5Enbv%5E,00.html
I suspect the judge is confused about pop ups versus
Hi there,
Dear WSG members, I'm a bit confused about the correct use for
address-element.
W3C documentation states that it should be used to supply contact
information for a document or a major part of a document such as a form..
Now as I'm working on phone (and address) directories, I am
I just noticed Opera have opened the Opera Labs page and they now have
Opera 9 Preview 2 available for testing. The site has minimal content
at the moment (after all it just opened) but there is a short speil on
Opera supported web standards and the direction they are heading in:
Maybe the standards community prefer to ride ponies instead of real
race-horses? ;-)
Must be something to do with keeping nearer the earth. Opera spoils
web developers, and makes Internet Explorer (and Firefox, to a lesser
extent) that much more shocking ;-)
hehehehh ahhh dear, we're the
The problem is that many small/micro businesses don't see it
(y)our way. They only see the shiny coat of paint, not the rust
underneath it, or the engine under the bonnet. Bombarding them
with technical jargon isn't going to help. They just see a web
page in their browser. It either looks
So here is the question:
What are the benefits of web standards for small business that can be
sufficiently
measured in results for the business both in the long and short term?
I've been thinking a bit about this one...
Actually, I think some of the benefits touted for large-scale sites
You should seriously consider how you are doing your CSS right now and how
you should begin planning for the not so distant future of IE6 being the
minority browser. Microsoft wants to ditch IE6. IE7 will be part of a
service pack upgrade to xp and as part of the fabled vista platform.
Just
I wanted to understand why this happened. Is standards only really
something a small contingent of geeky developers go for?
I think it's fair to say that standards developers are still the
minority, but that doesn't make them wrong. What's right is not
always popular, what's popular is not
Hi there,
I've been on this list since returning from WE05 in Sydney last October,
hoping that the same feeling of sharing and openness would prevail. It does
to a certain extent, but the few glaring exceptions have tended to put me
off posting to the list.
I doubt an email list could ever
My question is: is web-standards really considered a part of the
professionalism of web people considering that even the IT media
(AustralianIT) ignores this aspect?
Well, yes. The IT Media really haven't caught on to standards. That
doesn't mean web professionals haven't, or shouldn't.
I'd
Always use example.com, example.org or example.net in examples in the
Heh I never knew about those! You learn something every day :)
thanks!
h
--
--- http://www.200ok.com.au/
--- The future has arrived; it's just not
--- evenly distributed. - William Gibson
I have just discovered the 'small screen rendering' tool in Firefox (web
developer toolbar). Am I right in thinking this is an attempt to show
what a site looks like on a mobile device or similar? Is it a good
guide? etc.
That's the theory, but with the vagaries of handheld/small screen
Hi,
I've recently put online a free visual form editor that allows the creation
of html forms without using tables for layout and I'd appreciate any
suggestions for the editor and the html/css code it generates.
Once I had added a couple of items it wasn't clear to click to the
next tab to
Hi,
Should the caption be changed to include the attribution?
Table 1 - Summary of Key Indicators (source: Foo Corp 2005)
I'd go with this solution. It's a logical place for attribution and it
doesn't really go anywhere else without losing specific association
with the table contents.
h
--
I have a client who wants to set up his business site in such a way that his
logo and business presence is always maintained when the client visits a
link to one of the manufacturers that my client represents.
...
Now, I am not a proponent of frames, but this sounds like frames to me. Is
As for a standards-based
page, agreeing that it is not a hard and fast rule that tables be
banned for layout, can you present some logical arguments against this
page - keeping strictly within the context of standards:
http://www.projectseven.com/csslab/zealotry/linear_basics.htm
I would
I would pose the counter question: agreeing that it could have been
done easily enough in CSS, why use a table?
No arguments for the table? :)
Fair enough. Of course, my opinion differs in that I believe that
there is no standard mandating that a table not be used for layout.
Personally
[snip] ACRONYM and ABBR
I take a fairly simplistic view on this one:
1) Future standards only include ABBR.
2) Acronyms are a form of abbreviation.
3) For the sake of good writing, you should spell out the full term on
first use anyway. That covers bad browsers, too.
so, I just use ABBR
I guess your assertion hinges on how one interprets the word should.
Perhaps I am English-challenged, but I always took should to have a
suggestive or advisory connotation, while shall or must are
obligatory :-)
One quick comment on this... I always write must in draft policy
documents; but
What, when I can whinge on a mailing list?
No, no - I'm leading open and earnest discussion, honest I am ;)
OK, OK, I'll try to figure out what email address to use later today :)
Yeah, good luck finding usable contact details on their site ;)
As far as I can tell, Google doesn't write
OK, OK, I'll try to figure out what email address to use later today :)
Interesting timing rumour is that http://www.google.com/ig is
going to become their new My Google style portal page.
The markup still stinks.
h
--
--- http://weblog.200ok.com.au/
--- The future has arrived; it's just
Hi there,
- Does anyone know of an accessible PeopleSoft built application?
I haven't heard of one which is what I would call accessible :)
- Has the issue of PeopleSoft generated code been an issue or is the
responsibility that of the company using it?
The PS code is all tables and bad
the first, for example:
ol start=40
li
divtext info in here/div
/li
What do people suggest?
I'd vote for:
ol start=40
litext info in here/li
/ol
I think the specs should not have deprecated the attribute - breaking
up huge lists into separate pages is entirely legit, which means the
Hi there,
One reason there is so much debate is the HTML 4.01 spec actually
whimps out of making a call ;) In other words, it doesn't actually say
if skipping a level is wrong; it just says some people think it's
wrong.
What the spec DOES say is that the headings are ordered from 1 to 6 in
order
i dont know if i will be able to sell them on
it. I was going to try the angle that web standards are helpful/essential
for accessability-which they get alot of requests for these days. The
programmers dont want me to do any coding or as little as possible-so as not
to step on thier toes.
If
That and clean XHTML is easier to hand-code than tables...
Without wanting to open a can of worms here; how so? Do you mean in
conjunction with CSS, or just that XHTML markup is cleaner than that of
HTML?
Just that XHTML markup is faster to type by hand than nested tables
and font tags. Most
Hi,
However, today I disabled styles on a fairly complicated table and realized
it made very little sense without any demarcation between the cells.
It would be simple enough to do table border=1.
I've found that tables really need a border to make sense, much the
same as a fieldset needs the
Hi there,
One of the Technical Guidelines is to use a text browser such as Lynx to
... But recently I found that the Opera browser has an option to view your
web in the way a text browser should do ( View/Style/User/Emulate Text
Browser). Do anyone knows if the Lynx's browser is something
Does anyone actually use lynx anymore though
Actually I know someone who uses it on a daily basis, due to an
extremely limited network/bandwidth quota at his workplace.
He can't install a second browser (locked down desktop), and he has to
keep IE set up for sites that don't work without
Me too^H^H^HWhy yes, I'll be there :)
Will be doing a little 'live-bloggin' on http://notinteractive.com/
and more professional coverage on http://leftjustified.net/
Man, is this conference going to be buzzword compliant or what.
WE05! Comin' atcha! We got podcasts! We got liveblogs! We got
Yes, Opera has gone insane with happiness and have released their
browser free, without an ad bar permanently. I guess it was inevitable.
Yeah, to really get competitive they needed to go free. People might
use their browser pretty much constantly, but it doesn't occur to them
that perhaps
linked. Does anyone know a rule I can point to (and send my client to
read) re accessibility and click here?
Dey Alexander has a neat and concise paper on the issue -
http://www.deyalexander.com/papers/clickhere.html
Covers usability and readability as well as accessibility.
cheers,
h
--
---
At 03:44 PM 9/7/2005, Christian Montoya wrote:
I was actually thinking the other day, browsers should be more like
compilers... they should refuse to parse incorrect code. Then the
enforcement would be on the output end, too.
Why on earth would I want to use a browser that refused to show me
I'm wondering about the use of the label tag in certain cases where thelabel relates to multiple fields.
Is there a recommended practice here? Should each select box have itsown label?
Yes, each one should have its own label; with the set grouped in a fieldset (with appropriate legend tag).
Also,
It alleviates the problem, but realistically I still think designers are better off using relative units
Just as a matter of clarification: pixels *are* a relative unithttp://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/syndata.html#length-units
However, they're relative to the screen resolution, rather than
Hi there,
I ask the question partly tongue-in-cheek, but it does make me wonder iftools such as this should be the butt of responsibility?
No, I'd say tools like this are workarounds for the failings of the
native browser. You certainly can't start using pixels for sizing just
because a user
Hi,
http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/
http://validator.w3.org/
I'm all for teaching students how to look up the answer, but in this
case I also recommend they read
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/readspec/ first so they have a
better chance of understanding the answers :)
I've never found a
I am looking for a CMS system that will produce code/mark-up that
follows web standards. A lot of systems spits out tables and weird
tags that doesn't validate. I'm mostly interested in freeware, but if
I need to buy one to get such a system then that's fine too. I have
been searching the net
Are the disabed really the main priority when it comes to web
standards?
Not exactly, they're just one of many groups that benefit. They happen
to benefit quite a lot, of course.. :)
Standards benefit pretty much everyone, whether they realise it or
not. Standards compliant sites are
Hi,
We've had a discussion at work about pdf documents and hijacking the user's
browser / making it more user-friendly. What is the general feeling towards
having pdf and other non-html documents open in a new window?
I view PDF, .MS Office documents etc as *non web content*. That is,
they
What sizes are you designing for?
For the sites I work on, the majority of the audience has 1024x768 *or
better*, but a significant amount (10-25% depending on the site) still
have 800x600. So we design for 1024x768, but designs have to remain
usable/functional at 800x600 without horizontal
In a controlled input situation (eg: a web developer's blog), a
solution like Patrick Lauke's 'type' link styling expermient (
http://www.splintered.co.uk/experiments/38/ ) adds more useful info to
the markup and can be used the same way; but when a client is in
control of the content you set
Hi,
Incidentally, I'm surprised that more people here haven't jumped in on
the discussion. Are all other web standards folks on here really in
agreement that (X)HTML is a visual language by design, or at least has a
strong bias towards the visual? I would have thought not, but there you
Hi,
Hi Heretic, please explain this. How does setting a % for text-size in body
prevent the appearance of smaller than 1em font sizes? Is 100% a good
starting point for body? Enquiring minds want to know.
Basically the idea is this: don't use settings smaller than 1em, for
example don't set
plug
Couldn't help myself ;)
Patience is a virtue, young padawan ;)
h
--
--- http://www.200ok.com.au/
--- The future has arrived; it's just not
--- evenly distributed. - William Gibson
**
The discussion list for
Hi there,
what are you guys using as a base css file to start a site with common hacks
and what not?
These days I invariably kick off with the global whitespace reset (hi
Andrew!) http://leftjustified.net/journal/2004/10/19/global-ws-reset/
...and some controlled whitespace settings.
If I
We're doing a tender for a client that has requested a text-only
version of the site, for accessibility reasons. Now, *I* know that
that's ridiculous and text-only is not an acceptable alternative to an
accessible site, but I need some good verbage/references to explain
that (and what we
requirement; I have said that if they want an accessible site written in CSS
they can't have it looking exactly the same in older browsers that don't
support CSS 2.0 unless I use 'old skool' presentation techniques. Has anyone
else run into this problem? I suspect there are plenty of people,
Sticks, carrots staying sane: An approach to standards advocacy in
large organisations and very interesting it was.
You are too kind ;)
The presentation is online at
http://weblog.200ok.com.au/2005/06/sticks-carrots-staying-sane.html
and the video appears to have been successful, so
Wondering how we can get CSS to specifity the spearator used in ordered
lists (ie: the thing between the list item number and the value of the list
item). For example...
As someone has already mentioned,
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/generate.html#counters will eventually
be the way to do
Seriously: how many people enter data into a form and go so completely
wrong that they want to erase everything they have just done and start
over new?
Some users may want to do that; alternatively some users will change
their minds about submitting at all and do not trust simply closing
the
Hi there,
My first question is that if I convert the PDF files to HTML to make
them more accessible, am I right in thinking that this is only half my
job done? If the original file wasn't marked up correctly in the first
place before being saved as PDF (with headings, etc) does this mean
dtAt x:xxpm so-and-so said:/dt
ddblah blah blah/dd
Accurate I suppose although I'm a bit undecided about numbering
inserted as content. Similarly been thinking about markup for search
engine results.
ol
liAt x:xxpm so-and-so said:
blockquoteblah blah blah/blockquote
/li
/ol
Thinking
I thought that if Flash wasn't installed, the browser would prompt you
to download and install it rather than just displaying the alternate
content?
Not necessarily - plus many browsers now give the option to *disable*
the plugin which may result in different behaviour. For example I use
hi,
Can anyone tell me if/when it is 'OK' to use frames? Since the W3C spec
still includes them, I wondered (if) when it was considered legit to employ
them - on a par with tables, which are avoided at all costs, except when
displaying 'tabular data'. So I assume the W3C have included
Hi Jamie,
Aside from this though, the links are in the same size as the body text,
wouldn't a high contrast link need to be massive and bold? There's no WAY
anyone can do that on a high profile site, surely?
What to do? Any help and ideas would be great, thanks in advance,
I'd suggest
Does anyone know whether it's correct to use headings in your navigation?
I'd say it's not correct; although I'd counterpoint by saying that
nested lists imply the sort of structure I think you're trying to
define.
That is... the nested lists are one level down from the containing
LI. So
I would argue that in a heartbeat - when you're talking about an
architectural or otherwise design showcase site - what designer is going to
give half a though to blind or visually impaired users? Quite honestly, in
a situation like this site... who cares about them? - it's not for people
So, the point is, to say that 'Flash is awful because it's not accessible'
and all that stuff is to completely miss the point - it isn't for folk with
disabilities - the html option is.
Surely?
I'd say Flash is mostly a problem because it frequently breaks all
usability and accessibility
http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/biggest-web-design-mistakes-in-2004.html
What do you think?
Well... the piece would would have made sense if his point was you
still need to do this, but you need to filter the way you tell the
client. Instead, the implication here is that we should stop
hi there,
I'm wondering if a site would be more accessible if the flash intro (never
mind how it's a bad idea to have a flash intro!) skipped automatically if
the viewer had seen the intro before. I'm also wondering if I could detect
browser for the sight impaired and skip the intro then
Oh Damn, I guess I will have to make it visible again. I have only tested
it on FF, IE6 and IE5.
FYI, on the first tab Opera 8 beta 3 jumps to the name input at the bottom.
h
--
--- http://www.200ok.com.au/
--- The future has arrived; it's just not
--- evenly distributed. - William Gibson
Flash actually is searchable.
Hmm. Does it have to be a specific version of flash, built a specific
way? Just thinking of claims that flash is accessible, which
actually means flash mx can be accessible if the developer really
knows what they are doing; and the user knows how to use it, has the
Sometimes I think this web design game is more like a (neurotic) jigsaw
puzzle than an intelligent occupation :-)
*laughs* ... only sometimes? ;)
h
--
--- http://cheshrkat.blogspot.com/
--- The future has arrived; it's just not
--- evenly distributed. - William Gibson
Let me get it off my chest - I use frames sometimes!
You're not alone, although admittedly I didn't get to make the decision :)
However, what I want to know is, which browsers don't support frames?
As far as I know all of the common browsers support frames, but you're
forgetting that it's
hi,
I recently paid a visit to a certain SEO forum and had a look at the
forums there.
Whilst reading the threads, I couldn't help but be shocked and appalled
at the FUD being spread there.
Most SEO seems to be either complete FUD or ideas with very
questionable sources/backup info.
I'm wondering if any of you have any tips on creative ways to keep
spambots from harvesting email addresses on you page, and still keep
then accessable to diabled people and text-browsers. Here's my thoughts
If you only need to protect a small number of email addresses, there's
another
Hi there,
I am not too sure where else to ask about this. I have recently been part of
discussions about the Peoplesoft application that we and many Universities
use (not my fault) and its adherence to accessibility recommendations, and
web standards. Peoplesoft claims to adhere to section
Hi all,
Jumping in on all these architectural analogies... nobody seems to
have made this point: ultimately EVERYONE has some level of
responsibility, since everyone is and will remain involed.
Let's continue the analogy, for a new building:
1) The government sets out physical access
Hi there,
ol start=11liFirst result/li
liSecond.../li
...
/ol
My two cents: use this method. It's one of those times that the
standards are too strict without providing a robust alternative (more
the fault of browsers than standards, though).
I would support the idea of using Transitional
This is more of a general standards question, but if you are designing a
page for the public in general (in my case a university) at what point (
% wise _or_ # of browsers) do you say 'Okay this is the site, no more
trying to accommodate obscure browsers/older versions of browsers. ? I
know
[meta-data]
Good Lord! You could spend your whole life devoted to this area! :-)
you could, very easily. in fact, if you have major questions about
meta-data i recommend asking a librarian :)
when you get into serious meta-data and controlled vocabularies, you
discover an entire industry.
h
I had a pleasant surprise this morning when I saw this redesign. Good to
see another big site making the effort.
Mmm, I had a pleasant surprise; followed by disappointment; followed
by a rude shock; followed by sustained aggravation.
Pleasant surprise: hey, looks nice.
Disappointment: not a
Hi,
SO, question... is there a tracker that I can use that will still allow my
page to validate?
On some sites where I have no server log access, I use Nedstats
(http://www.nedstatbasic.net/service/) with my own rewritten version
of their code. Validates ok and gives reasonable info. It does
I just fired that page up in NN7, but rejected their
applet/certificate. I got this priceless error message:
You have chosen not to trust the ATO.
Please close all browser windows and start again.
You know, I never did trust the ATO ;)
Can I sue the ATO over this - like the SOCOG case.
I
How does microsoft benefit by offering IE at all? It's free. Updates
are free. It costs them bandwidth for downloads and updates. It costs
them staff time to code, fix, patch, etc. and they don't get a dime off it.
Rhetorical I guess but it's a good point. MS benefits from ubiquity.
MS
hi,
I haven't spent a lot of time worrying about the disabled or impaired
users of my projects because of the youth-focussed intent of them.
Just a thought on demographics: there are plenty of young people with
relevant disabilities. Plus there are people with technological
disadvantages or
http://members.optusnet.com.au/~night.owl/morons.html
Effective design principles would dictate that the whole point of the page
is to get the information to the target audience, but really does it? Its
offensively written, rude, long and even a bit angry
I've seen this page before and
I'm having a bit of trouble using frames without a border and getting the
frameset to validate.
This may be of interest
http://www.stopdesign.com/log/2003/03/04/swf_seeking_vwm.html
Hard as it is to accept, borderless framesets just won't validate. The
best thing to do is go for something
Hi Nick,
We successfully moved NN4 off our primary support list a couple of
years ago, despite the lingering in-house installs due to NN4 once
upon a time being the standard browser.
My thoughts on your situation
I have a requirements document here that I'm quoting for, that
mentions that
Hi,
Michael Wilson wrote:
What would you consider to be the key standards and accessibility
settings for Dreamweaver that some of us might be overlooking?
The settings I recommend to people at work
Accessibility tab:
Enable all of the Show Attributes when Inserting options
Code Format
You can edit pages which contain SSI's, just not any of the content IN
the SSI's. This is the perfect way to lock parts of the design you
don't want the client to touch. No need for DW Templates at all! :)
Slightly OT, but anyway: Is there a way to get DW to display the
contents of SSIs on a
Hi all (hmm, this would be a de-lurk..),
Also, I must admit I'm growing rather weary of all the negative remarks
about Dreamweaver. From my humble perspective I use Dreamweaver MX 2004
I must say I agree. As with all tools, you find out how best to use them and
what (if any) downsides there
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