Buzz Archives for December 2002
Happy New Year!
Philosopher Bertrand Russell said that "War does not determine who is right - only who is left." For web designers and developers, it's been browser wars that have made our lives very difficult. In some ways, those difficulties have sent less committed web creators running into the night. Those of us ...
By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in WaSP Announcement
- Counting Down One More Time On W3C Patent Policy
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Tomorrow is the deadline for the Call For Comments phase of the latest World Wide Web Consortium Patent Policy Working Draft. Needless to say, this version - based on royalty-free licensing - is perceived as more agreeable than its predecessor, which was based on a reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing model.
By Ben Henick | Filed in Web Standards (general)
- Dear Web Developers: Browser Sniffing is Stupid
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...especially if you do it poorly, basing decisions on user agent strings and assumed capabilities, rather than on actual capabilities. Two alert readers sent in sad examples of this in action just this week. First, the recently redesigned HotBot, which does make a tremendous effort to support standards and provide ...
By Steven Champeon | Filed in Browsers
- The Lifecycle of Accessibility
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evolt has just published a fine article by Italian Web developer Antonio Volpon, discussing the lifecycle of Web accessibility, a refreshing change from the simplistic advice to just add alt attributes to your images. Volpon talks about the phases all Web sites go through, and in the tradition of Mark ...
By Steven Champeon | Filed in Accessibility
- Is there a draft in here?
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The third XHTML 2.0 Working Draft was published yesterday. It is largely a corrective release, fixing some problems that were introduced in the second Working Draft, which was made public last week. As the W3C points out, XHTML 2.0 is a relative of the Web's familiar publishing languages, HTML 4 and ...
By Porter Glendinning | Filed in HTML/XHTML, W3C/Standards Documentation
- Opening Day
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Opera Software's "Open the Web" project asks Opera users to contact the owners of sites that fail in their browser or deny them entrance. "Let them know you would like to see the site work with all browsers, including Opera." If you're developing a site and are considering refusing access ...
By Porter Glendinning | Filed in Browsers
- Getting the Last Word
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Web standards gets the last word in an article written by Grant Butler for Globe Technology News. While best for those readers with a general rather than deep awareness of web standards, the article, All Browser Code Not Created Equal, is noteworthy because it explains in easy terms some ...
By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in Web Standards (general)
- WaSP Asks the W3C
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In an effort to assist developers and designers in understanding detailed issues when working with web standards, WaSP and the W3C kick off a new project today. The project, "WaSP Asks the W3C" involves WaSP Steering Committee members culling questions from supporters and asking members of the W3C's Quality Assurance ...
By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in WaSP Asks the W3C
- W3C Does CSS
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With its newly redesigned home page, the W3C tossed any remaining table layouts out the window and committed completely to CSS for page layout. The new home page is in general written for newer, standards-compliant user agents in XHTML 1.0 strict. Check out the W3C's updated look.
By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in CSS
- Take Two
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Mozilla 1.2.1 was released yesterday. This version addresses a bug introduced in the 1.2 release that, among other things, was causing problems for sites using document.write() calls to generate page content.
By Porter Glendinning | Filed in Browsers
- Another Hall-of-Shame Entry
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Check out Aventis - but only if you're running IE6 or Netscape 7. Their challenge, they say is life; on the evidence the challenges include basic standards citizenship. On a sidenote, once you do get into this site, the baroque menu structure is a good argument for some of the ...
By Tim Bray | Filed in Web Standards (general)
The Web Standards Project is a grassroots coalition fighting for standards which ensure simple, affordable access to web technologies for all.
Recent Buzz
UK government browser guidelines: good sense prevails
By Bruce Lawson | January 19th, 2009
You might remember that I published a post called UK government draft browser guidance is daft browser guidance last September, calling out a draft document outlining some UK government browser testing guidelines.
These suggested that for government web sites, webmasters need not test in less popular browsers (those with less than 2% in that site’s usage statistics) and that there should be a page on the site listing the popular browsers which had been tested with the message “We advise you to upgrade your browser version as far as your computer allows and if possible to one of those listed above”.
I called on readers to email the consultation address and object that the guidelines did not advocate web standards and methodologies like progressive enhancement to ensure that all browsers were served. The Register carried the story, and two days after I made that call, the author of the guidelines, Adam Bailin, commented that over 400 people had already emailed him.
Last Friday, 16 January, Adam published the revised browser testing guidelines, and he’s done a great job of including best-practice development. The guidelines point to the BBC’s support table as a good example of graded browser support, and notes the importance of supporting standards-compliant browsers (paragraphs 17-18):
Coding a site to web standards should ensure that any browser that supports web standards will render and behave as intended. Therefore your browser testing matrix must include browsers that support web standards.
You should follow a progressive enhancement approach to developing websites to ensure that content is accessible to the widest possible number of browsers.
The importance of valid code is noted (paragraphs 21-23):
All (X)HTML content must validate with respect to your chosen DTD.
You must use valid CSS for the presentational layer of your website including layout and styling. (X)HTML tables should only be used for presenting tables of data.
Code used for adding richness to the user interface (e.g. JavaScript, ActionScript) must be ECMAScript-compliant.
The guidelines now emphasise functionality over identical layout across browsers (paragraph 39):
You should check that the content, functionality and display all work as intended. There may be minor differences in the way that the website is displayed. The intent is not that it should be pixel perfect across browsers, but that a user of a particular browser does not notice anything appears wrong.
Graceful degradation without scripting/ plug-ins and accessibility are required (paragraphs 41-42)
You should also test your website to make sure that it works with scripting and plug-ins turned off.
Some users will be unable to use pointing devices so you should verify that the site works using a keyboard only.
I could be churlish and quibble about a couple of points in the document that I personally disagree with, but I won’t; the philosophical framework of the new Guidelines is a scalable, future-proof one that will properly serve taxpayers, web visitors and government webmasters in the UK.
I’d like to congratulate Adam Bailin and the team who revised the guidelines, and I’d like to congratulate every one of the 400+ readers who took the time and the trouble to write and support web standards.
It’s a job well done.
(Disclosure: I work for Opera, the browser vendor, and wrote the Opera consultation response).
Filed in Accessibility, Action, Browsers, General, Web Standards (general) | Comments (9)