Tips, web design book reviews, resources and observations for teaching and learning web development.
Check out Authentic Jobs. This site is specifically for Web workers such as art directors, web designers, programmers, software engineers and graphic designers. Here’s what they say about their jobs:
Authentic Jobs is a targeted destination for standards-aware designers and developers and the companies seeking to hire them.
Authentic Jobs was created by Cameron Moll and has been screening jobs since 2005, developing a good repulation as a source of job listings in the process.
Here’s a handy reference to tests for your website: Grade Your Website: 31 Free Online Tests.
Hope you missed me. I’ve been traveling for two weeks but I’m back now. Photos on Flickr soon.
Here’s a handy list from NCDAE that neatly (think: handout) lays out the Principles of Accessible Design. A good resource.
What fun! MoMB: most anticipated, The Museum of Modern Betas tracks interest in unreleased betas, or
the 50 most anticipated applications in the webosphere, as measured by the number of bookmarks at del.icio.us for apps which are not publicly released yet.
They promise to update this list once a week.
After a peek at what people are longing for in beta, go to the home page and look at the various web based apps in beta release that are mentioned here.
An excellent article by Mike Cherim at Accesssites.org today talks about the basics of accessibility. It is the type of article you want to bookmark and use as a reading assignment for your students. One of the most interesting sections of the article is when he describes the proper use of link text. He said,
Redundant Link Phrases
Don’t use the same link phrase more than once unless it leads to the same place and be descriptive of where the link goes. In other words don’t use link phrase terms like “read more about this topic” more than once unless the link phrase happens to lead to the same place.
Descriptive Link Phrases
As suggested above, be descriptive with your link phrases. All too common links phrases such as “click here” simply aren’t enough. You’ll be making users click on links just to find out where they lead. Even if you feel the context adequately explains where “click here” goes, on the web they may be removed from the context which defines them.
Link Separation
Separate your links by not making them consecutive. Putting even a lowly comma between them will satisfy this requirement. If they’re not used inline with text content, often the best solution is to organize them in an unordered list as mentioned previously as this easily provides the needed separation. Even as list-organized links, they can be styled horizontally with a simply entry in the page’s style sheet thus meeting the needs of your visual layout.
Link Identification
Underlining your links is conventional, widely accepted, and the best of all a recognized methods. While underlined links aren’t absolutely necessary and you may choose to offer them another way, do make them apparent and keep them uniform, just don’t depend on color alone to make this so.
Link Interactivity
Make sure your links are interactive. This may be accomplished by removing the link underline when a user hovers over them with a mouse or focuses on them with their keyboard – which is something even some seasoned developers tend to overlook. The interactive styling depends on their static styling so create a dramatic-enough change. But try not to make this interactivity depend solely on color alone unless said links belong to a very distinctive grouping such as a well-marked navigation list.
Despite claiming that the article is entry-level, Cherim addresses many of the major points involved in accessiblility. A good review, or a good introduction, no matter how you approach it.
Technorati Tags: web design, accessibility, usability, CSS, web design education, web standards
Sharron Rush, of Knowbility, talks about What’s up in 2007 for accessibility and takes a look at where we’ve made progress and where we have to keep pushing for progress. One of her comments is, “YouTube, Flicker and millions of blogs upon which the users themselves generate content are the fastest growing use of the Internet. What to do about accessibility when the content is being created by millions of users who do not have the first clue about accommodating the needs of people with disabilities?”
Addendum: SXSW podcasts a new interview with Sharron Rush discussing accessibility. She talks about the benefits of accessibility. Her background as an accessibility activist is also part of the interview. And, of course, you get some previews of what will be involved in this year’s SXSW accessibility panels.
Technorati Tags: web design, accessibility, usability, CSS, web design education, web standards
Microformats.org has three wizards that will generate the code for a microformat for you. Very easy to use. Try them: hCard Creator, hCalendar Creator, and hReview Creator.
ADDENDUM: I thought I’d give one of the microformat creators a try. Here’s the code it generated for me as an hReview.
★★★★★ A collaboration between the CSS guru Eric Meyer and the training movie queen Lynda Weinmann. It’s all on CD so the price tag is a little high, but the movies let you learn all about CSS layouts from the master
This
hReview brought to you by the
hReview Creator.
Technorati Tags: web design, microformats