Buzz Archives for February 2005
Staples.com CSS redesign
Update: Apparently, we BUZZed too soon; it appears that Staples has rolled back their site to its previous design. Hopefully this is a temporary hiccup, and Staples will soon be CSS-licious yet again. Following on the heels of its standards-savvy redesign of their customer rewards center, Staples.com has just launched ...
By Ethan Marcotte | Filed in CSS
- Selling Standards the Sweet Way
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If you find yourself having to explain for the umpteenth time to a client why building web pages to web standards is a good thing, you might feel a trifle annoyed. Trifle, you say? Aha, now there's the answer! So, let Andy Clarke explain what his dessert-based ...
By Ian Lloyd | Filed in Web Standards (general)
- Inclusive Design?
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Now, the Disasters Emergency Committee web site is not exactly a textbook example of good standards-based design, but apparently it will allow users with Lynx running on Sun Solaris to access the site and make donations (just turn a very blind eye to the nasty markup). It's a shame, though, ...
- Two Kinds of Web Developers: Those with Clue…
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Joe D'Andrea has produced an informative write-up on the new home page he and Vincent Murphy developed for AT&T. It's pretty, it's elegantly coded, it's valid XHTML Strict. Joe has even added print and handheld media stylesheets. What more could you want?
By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Web Standards (general)
- …And Those Without
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Dan Gillmor, tipped by a post from Robert Scoble, notes the irony of Demo conference award winner Homestead's slogan, "your website company". It seems that Homestead isn't fond of non-Microsoft OSes. The 'official' requirements seem to be Windows and IE4+ or Netscape Navigator/Communicator 4.x. As a practical matter, their SiteBuilder ...
By Chris Kaminski | Filed in Web Standards (general)
- Bad Form
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There's an interesting article over at ZDNet about the future of forms on the web. Is the way forward Xforms? Or is Web Forms 2.0 the way forward? Or are we gonna find ourselves having to deal with both? Read the article and decide for yourself whether this is a ...
By Ian Lloyd | Filed in W3C/Standards Documentation, Web Standards (general)
- CSS Hacks - A Timely Reminder
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With the news of IE7 somewhere on the horizon, there's something that all web developers should be aware of if - and it's a big if, I believe - Microsoft does take the opportunity of updating and fixing the CSS rendering problems with their browser. As Anne van Kesteren points ...
- There’s Nothing Mystical about Standards
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Vincent Flanders writes on his Web Pages That Suck site that one of the biggest web mistakes of 2004 (actually, number three in the list) is the 'mystical belief in the power of web standards, usability, and tableless CSS'. He writes: There is nothing wrong with any of ...
By Ian Lloyd | Filed in Web Standards (general)
- Celebrating Serious Bandwidth
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25 million downloads is a very respectable figure by anyone's standards, and standards are what we know and love here. That's the figure for Firefox downloads since version 1.0 was released 99 days ago, and Spreadfirefox is celebrating/commemorating the milestone with some very limited edition Firefox coins. Personally, I'm over the ...
By Ian Lloyd | Filed in Browsers, Web Standards (general)
- Standalone IE To Be Released This Summer
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While details are still scant, Microsoft today announced that it will be releasing a standalone version of Internet Explorer this summer. This is a drastic reversal of Microsoft’s stated intention to cease developing IE as a standalone product—and one that will have standards advocates biting their fingernails with trepidation. ...
By Ethan Marcotte | Filed in Browsers
- Hakon Gets Hot
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Hakon gets hot and tells Bill Gates what's what about interoperability. The article, Opera to MS: Get real about interoperability, Mr Gates must be read by every web developer and standards geek. Now.
By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in Browsers
- MSN Gets Religion
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WaSP Advisory Committee member Douglas Bowman has some nice things to say about MSN's new CSS-based look. And why not? While the XHTML Strict DOCTYPE is a bit optimistic, they come closer to achieving it than many high-profile sites. Quibbles or no, clearly someone on the MSN team 'gets it'.
By Chris Kaminski | Filed in CSS, 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
WCAG 2.0 is a W3C Recommendation
By Matt May | December 11th, 2008
After 9.5 years of work, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 have reached W3C Recommendation status. On behalf of the WaSP Accessibility Task Force, I’d like to welcome WCAG 2 officially into the pantheon of Web standards.
I think this tweet by caledoniaman sums up the level of anticipation:
WCAG 2.0 and a new Guns ‘n’ Roses album in the same year. What’s the world coming to.
Interesting comparison. They’ve each had about as many pre-releases. In any case, I can say, having spent over 8 years with it, that WCAG 2 is not as entertaining as Chinese Democracy. But I do think that it’s better equipped to stand the test of time.
If I had to pick one thing I’m most happy about, I’d say it’s that the HTML- and text-centrism in WCAG 1 is largely gone. In its place is a much more flexible (dare I say robust?) concept of accessibility-supported technology. So when newer technologies can show themselves to be directly accessible, they too can be used in WCAG 2-conformant content.
Over the years, many people have conflated “WCAG-conformant” with “accessible,” and that’s led to people making statements like: “Don’t use JavaScript–it’s inaccessible.” That’s bad for everyone, from users with disabilities who actually can work with JavaScript (which is to say, the vast majority), to Web designers and developers, to policymakers, to those developing new technologies.
With WCAG 2, “Don’t use x” is no longer valid. (Was it ever?) It is now up to you, the developer, to work on the direct accessibility of your content, no matter what technology you choose. I believe we’re about to experience a new wave of accessible design techniques, as a result.
But first, we need to flush “Don’t use x” out of our system. Some are accustomed to saying it about anything they’re not comfortable with. That’s only holding accessible design back. It’s time to learn what’s out there, today, and use it in everyday Web design. It’s time to make everyone’s Web more accessible. Have a look at the WCAG 2.0 Recommendation, and its supporting material. Then, start thinking about what a more accessible Web could be. We still have a lot of work to do.
Filed in Accessibility, Accessibility TF, W3C/Standards Documentation, Web Standards (general) | Comments (8)