Category Archives: Web pages

AJAX and Screenreaders: Screw the blind, this is the new web!

Sitepoint tries to figure out how well the Web2.0 works for blind people.

Basically, no US gov website, and none that loves blind people, will be able to implement a AJAX-only site – a noscript verson will have to be available. And this stems from the fact that it’s too hard to make the various screenreaders act in a standard way in response to changes to the document. Which sounds to me to be a perfect problem for World Wide Web Consortium standardisation.

Ajax = Chocolate = Happiness

FogBugz 4½ has been released, so that amazing new ajax features can ship:

In the last year or so a lot of web developers have been working hard on improving their applications using techniques now known as Ajax. These applications use JavaScript code so that when you click on something, you get immediate feedback, rather than waiting for the web server to send you a new page at its own leisurely pace. When they do need more information from the server, they often download the small fragment they need, rather than waiting for the server to build a whole new page. The net result is faster, crisper feedback that makes you feel in control and creates “subjective well-being,” a.k.a. happiness, a feeling that is biochemically NO DIFFERENT THAN EATING LARGE QUANTITIES OF CHOCOLATE.

Who doesn’t like chocolate?

Where are the aliens?

Coffee drinkers are easier to persuade.

Fermi’s Paradox is explained by aliens getting adicited to computer gaming.

Strom reckons he knows how to make money with a website: ads! Plus a little other stuff.

An Irishman has a rather good summery of how to negotiate an intial salary.

Cross-platform rounded corners without images, extra markup nor CSS. The holy grail of web-design dweebs.

Hassles with background-image and font sizes

The other day I was working on upgrading the eVision web site to the new look (as well as the latest WordPress 2.02). While I’ve been using HTML for more than a decade, I have to admit, my grasp on CSS is patchy. I’m still picking it up. So it took a bit of wrestling to get it to (more or less) match the design provided by the graphic designer. The big graphic still isn’t in quite the right spot, but no matter, it’s still a vast improvement over the old one.

I did learn a couple of (possibly) valuable tips:

  • In Firefox, the background-image of a div doesn’t display in the portion of the div that has nothing in it. In my case, I had a UL (which forms the dropdown menu) in there, right justified. The background only appeared in the left hand bit in IE, not Firefox. I had to add a   to it to get it to appear… and then I had to specify a height, so the background image would go to the right height, instead of just the nominal height of the non-existent text.
  • Font sizes… after complaints from a colleague who is keen on big text, I had to remove all the references to pt sizes in text, in favour of em, so that IE would resize the text when asked. Firefox handles this even if you’ve got all pt sizes.
  • I also learnt I need to study CSS a bit more. The next projects will be doing some more upgrades and new WordPress themes, I think. I’ve got a few that need doing.

Browser vs Website

Am I the only person who uses Alt-D to get to the address bar in Firefox? I suppose I could also use Ctrl-L, or F6, but I’ve settled for Alt-D, probably because it can be easily done with one hand — my left hand — and is close to the bottom of the keyboard, making it easy to find.

Problem is some web sites implement access keys that conflict with this. The default setup for MediaWiki sites uses Alt-D as a shortcut for deleting pages! Thankfully it goes to an Are You Sure confirmation before actually doing it. They seem to have disabled it on Wikipedia, but others still have it.

Likewise, Horde (web mail) uses Alt-B to Blacklist mail senders, conflicting with Firefox’s Bookmarks menu.

Firefox doesn’t appear to have an about:config tweak for turning all such keys off, though altering accessibility.accesskeycausesactivation to False will merely put focus on the link with the access key, not “click” on it.

This article discusses access keys in detail, including listing the requirements for access keys on UK government sites. Alt-5 for FAQ… hmmm.

NVU

I’ve been playing around with the NVU web page editor, an open source application available for Windows, Mac and Linux. So far it’s good stuff, certainly rivalling Frontpage, and heaps better for new users looking for something cheap or free other than MS Word (which has well-known problems).

Now up to version 1.0, it probably isn’t on a par with Dreamweaver, but for basic WYSIWYG web page editing, definitely worth a look.