Tips, web design book reviews, resources and observations for teaching and learning web development.
Here’s a video of how blind people use the accessibility features of iPhone 4S.
Another video, this time with accessibility expert Derek Featherstone talking about bringing accessibility to mobile. This is a talk from a11yMTL. YouTube also has video from the event by Shawn Henry, Elle Waters and more.
You can now get Google Maps for your iPhone.
Steve Faulkner suggests another addition to the HTML5 spec in the form of a subline element.
My Name is Me is a site that supports people’s desire to use a pseudonym online.
What’s Wrong with Quora? is Jon Evans question. He states his opinions, but for me Quora fails because it is too slow, too obtuse, and too difficult to track. I don’t go to Quora for anything. It isn’t worth the effort.
spellcheck Attribute from David Walsh has code examples and working demos.
Alexandra Wrote talks about when the personal becomes political and the power of having a platform in Blog the Change: Social Media Good in 2012. By the way, if you are interested in learning about how to use Pinterest to support your blog and to gain more blog traffic, Alexandra Wrote is an excellent example to study.
WETA visual effects pioneer Eileen Moran, 60, dies of cancer. She worked on all your faves.
Need a laugh? Here are a bunch of social media parody videos.
Cross-Browser Retina/High Resolution Media Queries. Brett Jankord has some suggestions for improvements on the current way of working with media queries for high res devices.
IDs will not make your document more semantic by Louis Lazaris is a response to a couple of previous authors on the question of ID use. He links to the previous articles and has an update at the end about one of the articles. Interesting semantic discussion.
Just in case you hadn’t realized it’s December, a little reminder that 24 Ways is publishing again. Today’s post is about accessibile color.
The use cases for a <main> element is must reading for anyone interested in HTML.
Why use @supports instead of Modernizr? is a response by Bruce Lawson to the @supports article by Chris Mills.
Nice code snippet examples in How to Define Required Inputs with ARIA and HTML5.
I first noticed the uproar over #1reasonwhy in this post: As Of Right Now, Women in Games and Tech Are Tweeting About Industry Sexism, Offering Mentoring To Others at The Mary Sue. I went to Twitter and searched on the hash tag and the number of posts coming in were so rapid I couldn’t even read them before they were gone. Since then, The Guardian has published a more comprehensive post on the topic, #1reasonwhy: the hashtag that exposed games industry sexism.
Here are just a couple of the more hopeful posts out of a sad Twitter stream on #1reasonwhy.
In 31 years, I have never seen this level of support for women in the industry. THANK YOU, EVERYONE. Your voice matters. #1reasonwhy
— Brenda Romero (@br) November 28, 2012
Be part of the change in the Games Industry after #1reasonwhy: Sign up as a Games Ambassador ukie.info/videogamesamba… RT
— Morna Simpson (@girlgeeks) November 28, 2012
Will the worst offenders in the gaming industry be changed by the conversation? I hope so. Congratulations to those who spoke out about their treatment, and to those who offered mentoring and help to others.
Glenda Watson Hyatt, aka the left thumb blogger, uses an iPad as a communication device. She recently went to SOBcon and has some must read comments about the difference between communication equality and communication equivalence. First read Communication Devices: An Communication Equivalent, But An Equal? and then Communication Equality in Social Interactions: What Does that Really Look Like? And, bonus info is a preview of Kel Smith’s upcoming book Digital Outcasts: Moving Technology Forward Without Leaving People Behind.
TechCrunch ran an article saying iPads will garner to most downloads for the next five years. I was in my local Apple store yesterday and the place was crowded and buzzing. That seems to be the case every time I go in there. Even when the recession was at it deepest point, the Apple Store was busy, busy, busy. But predicting for the five years ahead with so many competitive tablets coming on the market now seems a bit risky to me. However, the prediction is only about downloads, and Apple does have the apps. I posted a poll about the most important features of tablets a few days ago, and the tools and apps available on the tablet were the top factor. (Not many voted, but of those who did, that’s what they wanted.)
Do you check out eBooks from your local library to read on your mobile device? I do. I use Overdrive for this. According to The Verge, eBook availability may increase because of a new deal with the publisher Penguin. Wish Overdrive would make a deal with Peachpit, O’Reilly and Sitepoint!