Buzz Archives for May 2006
BrowseAloud respond
Many thanks to Martin McKay, Technical Director and one of the founders of Texthelp (developers of BrowseAloud), for responding to my previous post All aboard the PAS 78 gravy train. In a refreshingly sincere and straightforward email Martin reassured me of his personal commitment to the cause of accessibility and literacy. ...
By Patrick Lauke | Filed in Accessibility, Accessibility TF, Action, General
- WCAG review period extended
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The comment period for WCAG 2 has been extended to Thursday, June 22. If you are thinking about giving feedback, I suggest reading the directions for commenters. The ATF will be publishing a broader set of issues shortly, and working to help the WCAG Working Group cover narrower technical issues as ...
By Matt May | Filed in Accessibility, Accessibility TF, Action, General, W3C/Standards Documentation
- On Quality Education
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“What college or university has a good program for Web Development (or Design)?” is a question frequently encountered on mailing lists, in forums, or in conversations with others. Many would like to know the answer.
By Holly Marie Koltz | Filed in Education, Education TF, General
- Educating Web Professionals
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José Trudel instructs students with a focus on emerging technologies, standards, and skills; providing a strong foundation needed for today’s web professional.
By Rob Dickerson | Filed in Education, Education TF, General
- Microsoft Expression Preview Release
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Set to debut in June of 2006 Microsoft has publically released a free trial preview of its newest web authoring tool, Microsoft Expression Web Designer.
By Holly Marie Koltz | Filed in Authoring Tools, General, Microsoft, Web Standards (general)
- Adobe’s Spry Framework for AJAX
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Adobe Labs Spry Framework for AJAX - friendly to use, but poor support for standards.
By Drew McLellan | Filed in Dreamweaver TF, General, Validation
- Yes, We Have the Power
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Chris Wilson of Microsoft swears to live by the standards sword - or end his relationship if Microsoft doesn’t stay true to the standards course.
By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in Action, General, Microsoft TF
- All aboard the PAS 78 gravy train
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With the extensive media coverage following its launch, a large number of businesses, education establishments and government agencies with a stake in the UK online market should be aware of PAS 78 - Guide to Good Practice in Commissioning Accessible Websites. Partly due to the cost associated with this document, ...
By Patrick Lauke | Filed in Accessibility, Accessibility TF, General, Legal, Opinion
- Scared of the Dark?
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The impact of web 2.0 and/or AJAX-based web applications - from the point of view of a blind user, not a standardista (for a change).
By Ian Lloyd | Filed in Accessibility
- Even Scoble Says Nay Nay
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No, this isn't a comedy routine with the fabulous John Pinette taking the stage. It's part of an ongoing tragic saga of Web sites that are browser-specific. Nothing new there, as we all know. In this case, they're all Microsoft sites, alas, and even Robert Scoble is just saying no. While ...
By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in General, Microsoft
- AJAX, Accessibility & Screen Readers
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James Edwards presents his findings having looked at how AJAX interacts (or fails to) with various screen readers. The results aren’t exactly inspiring.
By Ian Lloyd | Filed in Accessibility
- Lessons that the standardization process can teach us
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Over at Six Apart they’re working to turn Trackback into a standard, and WaSP emeritus Anil Dash shares some of the wisdom he’s gained from the process. Some of the points he makes have bearing on the things we’re trying to accomplish over here at WaSP…
By Ben Henick | Filed in Authoring Tools, Browsers, Opinion, 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)