Web Teacher » WebStandards

Useful Links: WCAG, by the numbers, mobile development

vdebolt — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 13:40:18 +0000

WCAG Next from WebAIM offers ideas that Jared Smith explained, “we have identified areas of the guidelines that could be improved or clarified.” Jared should know, he’s been helping people comply with WCAG since day one.

The plain numbers about women in tech – the VCs is from Pleasure and Pain. Take a look at the numbers in venture capital firms and draw your own conclusions.

On Mobile Web Development argues for letting the dust settle on the specs before implementing the new shiny. And to remember that there’s more than iOS in the mobile sphere.

HTML5 News Resource

vdebolt — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 13:40:51 +0000

I invite you to follow HTML5 News on Scoop.it! You’ll find tutorials, discussions, books, videos, and more. Everything of interest that relates specifically to HTML5 will show up here. You can use this resource for learning, teaching, or keeping up with what’s happening in the web design world.

Getting media queries to work in older browsers

vdebolt — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 13:25:04 +0000

The possibility that you may want media queries to work in older browsers does exist. We normally think of media queries as only being used to create responsive designs, which implies modern browsers on devices like iPhone or iPad. However, there is a JavaScript you can use if you need to support older browsers for other reasons.

There is native support for media queries in Firefox 3.5+, Opera 7+, Safari 3+ and Chrome. For browsers older than that, you can use css3mediaqueries.js, available free from Google.

If you are a Dreamweaver user, or have used my e-book “How to Create a Responsive Web Site Using Dreamweaver CS 5.5,” be aware that this script does not work with @import stylesheets. See Media Queries 101 for some tips on how to use methods other than @import rules for media query styles.

Useful links: W3C news, responsive tables, responsive templates

vdebolt — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 14:04:49 +0000

Two announcements from the W3C relating to accessibility are important news today. The first is a couple of new notes relating to WCAG 2.0. You can find links to the relevant documents here. The other announcement is the first draft of the Media Accessibility User Requirements. The W3C description of the media requirements document: “It first provides an introduction to the needs of users with disabilties in relation to audio and video. Then it explains what alternative content technologies have been developed to help such users gain access to the content of audio and video.”

A Responsive Design Approach for Complex, Multicolumn Data Tables.

Initializr. A responsive design template from verekia.

Useful links: Alt, POUR, Layout

vdebolt — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 13:11:41 +0000

The Hidden Nuggets of WCAG 2: When Not to Use Alt Text. Excellent article. Would be a great resource to send students to read.

Constructing a POUR Website is from WebAIM.

Six CSS Layout Features to Look Forward To. This is material from a talk on how the CSS Working Group is attempting to solve the concerns of Web developers with multiple proposals.

Web Education Community Group at the W3C

vdebolt — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 13:27:52 +0000

A new W3C web education community group is building and forming. You can join and participate here: w3.org/community/webed.

The Web Education Community Group (CG) aims to evolve the Web and improve the overall skill set of the web industry by improving the quality of available web education resources and courses around the world.

There’s a wiki at w3.org/community/webed/wiki/Main_Page. The curriculum from WaSP InterACT is being moved there. This will increase distribution and participation in keeping the web standards based web education curriculum that InterACT created current and relevant.

I know some of you are interested in working with Move the Web Forward. As web educators, joining and participating in the Web Education Community Group at the W3C is a perfect way to contribute to moving the web forward.

Move the Web Forward

vdebolt — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 13:45:48 +0000

Yesterday on Blue Beanie Day, Stephanie Sullivan Rewis announced a new web project on the blog at web standards project. Her post was called Beyond the Blue Beanie.

Today I’m happy to announce a new project, put together by a group of very passionate web folks, that can enable your entry into the process of moving the web forward—no matter what skill level you’re currently at—Move the Web Forward.

The purpose of the new Move the Web Forward site is to help people give back to the web community. Here’s their objective:

Whether you’re a talented web developer, web-slinging since the days of tables and font tags, or you’re a hobbyist hacker, there are a number ways for you to give back. Below, we list some of the ways that anyone can contribute back to the web platform.

Our goal is to make it easy for anyone to get started contributing to the platform, whether that’s learning more about how it works, teaching others, or writing specs. The web has grown due to people like you, and we want to make it even easier for people like you to give back.

There are a multitude of ideas there for how you can level up, dig deeper, or contribute as a guru. No matter what your level of expertise, it’s possible to get involved.

See Also: Smashing Magazine’s The Smashing Guide to Moving the Web Forward.

Supporting Web Standards Today?

vdebolt — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 14:13:47 +0000

It’s Blue Beanie Day, the day on which we all show our support for web standards by wearing a blue beanie.

Jeffrey Zeldman started this event several years ago. It’s been successful in getting all sorts of people to add blue beanies to their various avatars and standing up for web standards on a particular day each year.

It needs to be an every day event to support web standards. For many people it is. Those people are keeping up with the standards, writing web pages that show that they understand what it’s all about, and – for educators – showing others the way to create web sites using web standards. Really committed web standards people are working with browsers, following browser updates, and contributing to the writing of new specs and new browser engines.

Check out the Web Standards Project and Web Standards Sherpas for information about how you can make a contribution to web standards all year long. There’s a new project in the works (I’ll supply the URL when it’s available) that is meant to answer the question “I’ve got my blue beanie on. Now what? What can I do besides wear a toque?” That will help you find ways to learn, participate, and contribute.

Useful links: top 25 books, edu conferences, blue beanie day, semantics, Think Up

vdebolt — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 14:23:57 +0000

The top 25 books for web developers and designers from .net is a good list to check to see if you’re keeping up with the latest. I noticed that several of the 25 are from A Book Apart. That led me to tweet this:

Is there some sort of brain implant that would directly feed every publication from A Book Apart into my brain?Sun Nov 13 17:26:02 via TweetDeckVirginia DeBolt
vdebolt

Oddly, there were people on Twitter who didn’t see the humor in that and suggested I should read the books. With my eyes. Because I don’t want you to worry about me, you should know that I am reading them. With my eyes.

Conferencepalooza suggests some good conferences for high ed folks. Check it out, there might be a great one there. You do know that SXSW is holding a special pre-conference for EDU this year, don’t you? It’s SXSWEDU.

Get out your blue beanie and join Chris in giving thanks for web standards on Nov. 30, 2011 – Blue Beanie Day. Why should we give thanks, Chris asks? Because the bums lost!

Installment 3 in a round robin of posts about semantics. This one from Paul Irish explains enough about the first two that you can follow even if you haven’t read them. (Why haven’t you read them!)

Think Up is new software that Gina Trapani announced was out of beta yesterday. It does all of what I was wishing Twitter would do plus more with Facebook and Google+. It’s installed or your server or can run from the Amazon cloud for a monthly fee. I think Think Up is going to be big.

Useful links: Responsive images, WordPress gallery

vdebolt — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 14:15:37 +0000

Responsible Responsive Images brings out some points worth pondering.

WordPress has added image gallery support. Here’s how to make it work. Can’t wait to find a reason to try it out.