Category: CSS

Useful links: CSS Layouts, Ray, iPad Mini

The Future of CSS Layouts slide deck and other materials are from a presentation at the Future of Web Design

A new smartphone called Ray has been created for the blind and visually impaired. As with all progress made in the area of accessibility, this technology may have far reaching effects on all smart phone technology.

The iPad Mini announcement yesterday means we finally have the much rumored iPad Mini. What was your opinion of the pricing? I was a bit disappointed that it was so much higher than the competition in the small tablet field, but then again, competing on price has never been Apple’s thing. With Google marketing a $250 laptop and the Kindle Fire HD doing much of what an iPad does, I was hoping (in vain) for something more affordable in an iPad Mini.

Useful links: Full background, Accessible Themes, Student Guide

How Full Page Background Images Affect the User Experience give some interesting points about full page backgrounds that I’d never considered. Plus a link to a how to at CSS Tricks if you want to try out a full page background.

Accessible Joe announced a project to create accessible WordPress themes called Cities. He’s working on one for Los Angeles. Karen Mardahl @kmdk is working on a Copenhagen theme. For Syndey, Australia, there’s Lisa Herrod @scenariogirl. Char James-Tanny @CharJTF is working on one for Boston. Jennison Asuncion @Jennison has one going for Toronto. All these new accessible themes will be available free through wordpress.org. @AccessibleJoe asks that you DM him on Twitter if you’d like to participate in this project. You can join one of the existing teams mentioned above, or organize for a new city.

A Student’s Guide to Web Design contacted me on Twitter, so I checked them out. Their purpose is, “equipping students after graduation for the design industry.” Recent grads might find a useful community there.

Useful links: Flexbox, background-size, models of disability, smart objects, HTML5 headings

Opera Dev has a post by Chris Mills called Flexbox: fast track to layout nirvana?

Take advantage of the CSS background-size property is at .net magazine.

Models of disability and their relation to accessibility is a fascinating post by Martyn Cooper. The post conclusion will give you an idea of the different models of disability the article discusses:

Our models of disability are important, they shape our attitudes and impact on how effectively the needs and preferences  of disabled people are met in design. The medical model is now widely seen as outmoded and a perpetuator of  discriminatory attitudes. The social model has had widespread influence. It is important in accessibility considerations because it recognises the importance of the context of the users and supports the view of accessibility as a relationship property; in the case of web accessibility the relationship being between the diversity of users and the web resource or application. Functional models have been asserted as the most useful in design and development and the potential of these for personalisation and analytics highlighted.

Working with Smart Objects in Dreamweaver and Photoshop is by Tom Negrino.

HTML5 Ranked Headings for Screen Readers. Yep, your hierarchy on HTML5. How’s it working in screen readers?

Announcing Web Platform Docs

A great new resource for learning web design was announced at webplatform.org. It’s a wiki and participation by knowledgeable web designers and developers is needed. That said, it’s already a huge resource of the best information available.

Congratulations to everyone involved in this effort. The group calls itself the Web Platform Stewards, and includes

  • Adobe
  • Apple
  • Facebook
  • Google
  • HP
  • Microsoft
  • Mozilla
  • Nokia
  • Opera
  • W3C

Paul Irish has a lot of good ideas about how you can contribute to the site in Why I’m So Excited about Web Platform Docs.

Useful links: Hacker vs. Maker, Social Media, Prebooks

Hackers and Makers: Language Matters is from Curious for a Living. She said, “Yes, language matters. Especially when we’re inviting community. What feels more welcoming to you: A hackerspace or a Maker Faire?”

NIce summary of how the candidates are using social media in the 2012 election. Do you think it makes a difference?

CSS: The Definitive Guide, Fourth Edition by Eric Meyer is a post about much more than the latest edition of Eric’s CSS opus. It’s about how books are marketed, sold, packaged, distributed and even conceived of as entities. As far as I know, O’Reilly is the first publisher to do something like this. I don’t think O’Reilly will be the last. Even if you aren’t interested in the latest CSS book, you need to read this post.

I tweeted about Eric’s post yesterday. He doesn’t completely share my opinion. Here’s a part the conversation Eric and I had then. (By the way, have you noticed how impossible it is to embed a complete conversation from Twitter? Twitter decides for you what tweets you want to include. This is a patchwork and not complete.)

 

 

 

Useful links: media queries, landmark roles, structural elements

CSS Media Queries is a Mozilla Dev Network basic tutorial on media queries.

Usable landmarks across desktop and mobile is from Henny Swan about which ARIA roles are the most useful and when to use them.

The truth about structuring and HTML5 page at .net magazine is sure to be controversial, as is the book it’s an excerpt from. Be sure to read it.