It’s good to see the guys (Tommy Olsson and Paul O’Brien) at SitePoint launching a new CSS quick guide reference. This comes with a browser compatibility table and comments by users. Already becoming a popular resource. Well done guys!
Lost properties: Sitepoint to the rescue
Coffee break
I can’t do without coffee; I get my best ideas when I’m sipping a cup of good coffee. Fair trade coffee.
If you are still not convinced of either the quality or the ethics of fair trade products, you might want to think about it during Fair Trade Fortnight.
It was an real eye-opener to watch Black Gold, a film I highly recommend, which creates awareness where the coffee we consume in the west originates from, and the small but significant difference to coffee growers we can all make as individuals.
Salt and lemon
I’ve been busy updating my blog. I thought I’d go for the full screen width this time and make use of the space. I will be adding more widgets over the coming days and weeks.
Why salt and lemon? Well, several things really… salt and lemon as in ‘margarita’, and Margarita happens to be my second name (although I never use it… till now!). In Mexico, we like adding salt and lemon to our fruit, like jícama, mangoes, cucumber, pineapple, and papaya.
Actually, we add salt and lemon (and a sprinkling of chilli) to pretty much everything! Yum!
HTML5 goes public
The first working draft of HTML5 has been published, together with the differences between HTML5 and HTML4.
Lachlan Hunt also gives us a preview on his article ‘A Preview of HTML5‘
Tidbits
Tired of email spam, Roel Van Gils, in his ListApart article shows how to stop it for now Graceful E-Mail Obfuscation
Guidelines for UK Government Websites: government websites must meet Level Double-A of the W3C guidelines by December 2008
A working example of Alt text and link images, explained by
Looking to automate testing? Watir “Web Application Testing in Ruby” might be what you are looking for.
High performance websites
As front-end web developers, we are always trying to build web pages that are going to be rendered fast enough by browsers. But there is much more to it than simply clean code and small images.
Yahoo’s Steve Souders presents some rules on how to improve the performance of websites in this video. You can also read 13 rules for speeding up your website.
CSS 10th anniversary
Ten years ago I started exploring CSS. A year later, I was lucky to put it all into practice on the most commercial site I’ve ever worked on, Microsoft Expedia UK. CSS continues to be strong and as many designers will agree, is the best way to make websites come to life.
There is still a way to go as Håkon Wium Lie (the co-authors of that original document recommendation) explains in his A List Apart article CSS @ Ten: The Next Big Thing.
It’s great to know that the web fonts are back! We need web fonts to enhance user experience and bring on the next generation of websites.
The W3C produced a brief history (on the actual birthday – 17th December 2006) on what has been achieved over the last decade.
Common-sense should always prevail
There has been a sense of unhappiness with the W3C’s new Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0) among the web developer community since its release. Joe Clark made his position very clear in his ListApart article ‘To Hell with WXAG2‘, and has recently suggested an alternative to the WCAG 2.o – the WCAG Samurai Errata, which challenges the work of the W3C.
The WCAG Samurai Errata is based WCAG 1.0 but has added a series of extra guidelines and corrections to it. I sense that there is real bitterness between the Joe Clark group and the W3C, but I agree with most of the points highlighted by the former.
For developers like me who have been working on building websites for some time (in my case, since 1996), our experience and common-sense, together with the guidelines should ensure we build robust templates for our applications.
Always observe how the people in your organisation use websites, and be prepared to listen and make changes.
I also think we are forgetting that the browsers themselves have some in-built features to assist people. As a reader, I find it difficult to read very small text, but the browser gives me the option to re-size the text.
If we comply with basic web standards, the browser and assistive technology do provide plenty of features for those that need it.
As web developers, we need to understand assistive technology and use our common-sense when interpreting the guidelines.
More browser testing?
As if we didn’t have enough browsers already…
Apple has released a beta version of Safari 3 for Windows users. It’s a good looking browser, but does it work? Eric Meyer has some doubts. Although I was pleased to see that none of my websites were broken!
This week we also saw the release of Netscape 9 and Camino (for the Mac).
Bonus link: More on browser support
An introduction to screen readers
Victor Tsaran: An Introduction to Screen Readers (27 minutes): teaches us the importance of semantic markup (via YUI Theater)
I co-founded the Social Media Cider Café. Free drop-in one to one sessions for SME's and non profit organisations.