Tag: Accessibility
Web design ‘pre-flight’ checklist
Over the years of being a freelance web designer, I’ve been developing my own processes for the business of designing websites. One of those processes has been compiling a list of tasks that need to be completed before launching a website, whether it be a new site or a redesign. This list is kept in a spreadsheet which I work through, ticking off each item after the client has given final sign off for the site to go live. I view it as my final quality control procedure and I usually find that the process will highlight a few of the ‘little things’ that I might have overlooked in general development. Usually nothing too major; more a case of ‘dotting all the Is and crossing all the Ts’.
Site updated to Microformats Value Class Pattern
It may only be a very small amendment, but I’ve just updated the HTML of this site to bring it in line with the new Microformats Value Class Pattern which has just been released as an alpha draft.
Fetching posts in Wordpress and ExpressionEngine with jQuery and AJAX
Recently I was asked by a client to do some customisation of a Wordpress site to enable a site visitor to load posts from a certain category into the same part of the page via AJAX. This could have been done in a couple of different ways – using AJAX as requested; or all the posts could’ve been printed to the page, with javascript then used to hide all but one and also used to navigate between them in some sort of hide/show, fading/sliding effect. I’ve done similar things like this before using jQuery, but there were two reasons why I didn’t go that route on this occasion:
- With javascript turned off, all the posts from the selected category would’ve been displayed on the page and as the design called for three short columns of text on the page, having one column much, much longer than the other two would really have looked wrong.
- The client specifically asked for AJAX to be used.
More on Fetching posts in Wordpress and ExpressionEngine with jQuery and AJAX
More useful extensions for developing with Firefox
A while ago I wrote about some of the extensions I use with Firefox which make the job of web development easier. I’ve since added some new ones to Firefox that I use on a fairly regular basis, so thought I should update the list.
What it’s like to run a web design gallery
Having compiled the list, done the numbers and dealt with the facts, I thought for the follow-up article to the The Ultimate Web Design Gallery Resource that I’d get some opinions from not only some of the people who run the web design galleries in the list about what it’s like to run one of these sites, but also some search engine optimisation (SEO) professionals about the perceived value of having your site included on one (or many).
When to use display: none
If you’re interested in website accessibility best practices, you might have come across warnings against using display: none to hide content that you don’t want to appear on screen. The argument is that content hidden with display: none can’t be accessed by people using screen readers, and the recommended solution is to position the content offscreen instead using a large negative position (let’s call this the offset method). But this shouldn’t be a hard and fast rule for all situations. There are some situations for which using display: none will be acceptable.
Tools for checking website accessibility
Following on from my last post in which I mentioned screenreaders (or alternatives) that people might like to try for checking their own sites’ accessibilty, and an earlier post in which I listed the extensions I use for web development with Firefox, I thought I’d also list the different tools I use for testing website accessibility.
The web from a screenreader user’s perspective
Victor Tsaran, an engineer and Program Manager for Accessibility at Yahoo!, has put together a 27-minute video introducing screen readers and how they interact with web pages.
Dropdown low down
Dropdowns (horizontal) or flyout (vertical) menus abound on websites and come in many different flavours. They are also put together in a number of different ways, some done with javascript, some with ‘pure’ CSS and some a mixture of both.
Developing your site using Firefox
As mentioned previously, I have a personal favourite browser when it comes to web development and that is Firefox. This is not only because of its good standards support (although it doesn’t yet pass the Acid 2 Test) and not because it has tabbed browsing and not because it’s any other browser other than Internet Explorer.
