This new tutorial CSS Express Pure CSS Drop-Down and Popup Menus by PVII from Project Seven has (free!) all the code, CSS, and scripts you need to build a drop down menu. If you’re teaching, it would make a great project. If you’re just looking for a drop-down menu, here’s a nice way to make one.
Category: design
Can you pass the quick look test?
Internet users judge Web sites in less than a blink – Yahoo! News says the latest research shows that you have about 1/20 of a second in which to convince people that your site is what they are looking for. Only a very clear message can make itself known in that length of time.
Neutral Colors
Here’s a bunch of neutral colors with hex or RGB codes at CSS Color Chart. This page uses Behr Premious Plus paint colors! Imagine that. They were scanned and treated with Paint Shop Pro. How about Morning Fog or Bisque or perhaps Burlywood as a page background?
Blog, Schmog: These tips are for everyone
How to Make Your Blog Accessible to Blind Readers – American Foundation for the Blind: “Quick Tips for Bloggers
So you have a blog, and you’re worried that it might not be accessible to people with disabilities? Don’t worry! A few simple changes can increase your
blog’s potential readership.
- Choose an Accessible Service
- Describe Your Images
- Avoid the Dreaded ‘Click Here’ or ‘More…’!
- Put Your Blogroll on the Right-Hand Side
- Check the Comment Form: Is It Labeled Properly?
- Use Flexible Font Sizes
- Don’t Force Links to Open in New Windows”
Accessibility: Super Nanny for the Web
Okay, so I have a dirty little secret. I watch Super Nanny. Here’s the scenario: there is this family with two parents, kids, a home, jobs, everything according to the American dream. Except that there is total chaos at home because the kids are out of control. What should be the fulfillment of a dream is more like a nightmare. Super Nanny arrives to save the day and issues the same basic instructions everywhere she goes:
- Be consistent
- Set rules and follow them
- Get on their level
- Reward good behavior
- Give advance warnings
- Explain everything
- Facilitate good choice-making
It strikes me that Super Nanny is like accessibility–bringing order to a dream that manifests as a nightmare for those with barriers to success.
The July 2004 Working Draft from the W3C, How People with Disabilities Use the Web, is a highly readable (especially for the W3C) description of some of the barriers to success for people using the web, and the super-nanny-like accessibility help that can let them be successful. Check it out and follow the links to more information if you aren’t already doing what is needed.
In a perfect world, every family would have good parenting and every website would have good accessibility. If you can move the world closer to perfection in either of those areas, please do.
Why colleges should stop teaching Fireworks as a primary web design tool
Here’s a recurring scenario in my life. Someone who took some college classes to learn to make web sites has decided to try to implement CSS and to make their sites accessible. The classes taught them to make web sites by using Fireworks to slice an image and to export the resulting table-based HTML to Dreamweaver. Now this person, who–I admit–does beautiful graphics in Fireworks, comes to me or to some discussion list I participate in and asks for help in making their Fireworks generated HTML work with CSS or fulfill some accessibility need. This question is like asking how to get a tricycle to go from zero to 60 in under 6 seconds—it demonstrates a gap in the basic knowledge of what is involved.
Some college has given this poor person a difficult handicap to overcome. That handicap is the belief that what they are doing is a best practice that will adapt to every requirement. Yes, Fireworks can generate HTML. No, learning to generate HTML with Fireworks is not the best way to learn to make web sites.
In terms of best practice, students should be learning how to structure an HTML document intelligently so that it can be presented with CSS based enhancements (including, perhaps, lovely images created in Fireworks). An intelligently structured HTML document can adapt to every requirement: CSS/accessibility for screen, print, handheld, etc.
A sliced image exported from Fireworks as a table full of empty cells, spacer gifs, images and almost no text is not the web design solution that some college classes lead students to believe it is. Classes should teach HTML, CSS, and then how to apply that knowledge with a tool like Dreamweaver.
Fireworks does have its place: to create graphics. It should be taught as a graphics design tool, not as a web design tool. Students who use Fireworks to create exportable HTML should know how to adapt it in Dreamweaver to make it meet their other requirements.
There are many options available to an instructor who wants to teach students to think in terms of building structure with HTML that will support CSS and accessibility. My own book is written in these terms, and other books I have reviewed here such as Web Standards Solutions by Dan Cederholm are as well.
New Edition of Non-Designer’s Design Book
The ten-year-old favorite by Robin Williams, The Non-Designer’s Design Book is now out in a 2nd edition with some updates and the same clear representation of the principles of good design. This book is a classic, easy to read, and very helpful to students trying to create Web designs when they don’t have a background in design.