I got a wild itch tonight and decided to make this site Section 508 Approved. All I really needed to do what do a little code alteration within the forms (search and theme switcher) in the menu. I had to add <label> tags around the search box and the theme drop down. I then used the labels.js javascript file from this demo to put the search's label inside the <input> tag. The labels.js script doesn's seem to work on IE5/Mac. Also, since I didn't really want to see the "Theme" label for the drop-down, I added style="display:none" - and that worked in all browsers except Chimera. Maybe I could just have a blank label, but what good is that? The validators also didn't like the onchange event for the theme drop-down and so I opted to add a go button as a workaround.
As for validators, I found that Bobby works pretty well, but only allows a certain number of requests per hour. What kind of validation site is that?! That's not very accessible in my book. You can try to validate this site using Bobby, and you might see this inaccessible error yourself. Rick Salsa pointed out a much better validator last week on the roller-dev mailing list. You can validate this site using it if you'd like.
I went ahead and created a new icon similar to Antipixel's icons. Boy, can the 508 badges get any uglier?! Now I have to find a good place to put it on this site, maybe down in the bottom right by the java.blog icon.
I played flag football today with some buddies in Denver's beautiful Washington Park. The game ended when I collided with a friend's shoulder at a pretty good clip. I got an instant headache as I crumpled to the ground wondering how bad I was hurt. So I think I might have a concussion, but don't really know. I felt fine about 3 minutes after it happened, although white t-shirts did have a shade of green to them. I was able to drive the 20 miles home, and I do feel a little out of it - but that could be from the 2 hours of football and late night coding last night. So if I start to make off-the-wall comments and such, you'll know why!
I feel like I quote Zeldman a lot, but he always has such good things to share that I can't help it! This time it's Issue 155 of A List Apart, for people who make websites: “Flexible Layouts with CSS Positioning.” He also suggests that we read “Accountability of Accessibility and Usability” by Anitra Pavka. The title’s a mouthful but the content is easy to digest. Pavka examines web accessibility in the light of recent legal challenges and invites our industry to create guidelines instead of waiting for Big Brother to tell us what to do.
BTW, anyone know why he uses target="eljefe" in his <a href>'s? I always end up removing them in my source. I say let the user do what they want - if they want to open the link in a new window, right click -> open in new tab. Notice I said tab, not window - who uses IE anymore when Phoenix has it all and more!
Kurt finally fessed up and told us a little about himself. Thanks Kurt! He also does a little nudging for us to tell about our first job out of school. I already did one post on this and how I worked for MCI Systemhouse out of school, but I didn't tell you about the project. I started with SHL (another name for Systemhouse, now owned by EDS) on August 4th, 1997. I had a two week project in Fort Collins (75 miles north of Denver) creating a Microsoft Access client to talk to an Oracle backend for Larimer County. I didn't mind the commute and the long hours, but the project was certainly stressfull for it being my first. I was working with one other guy from SHL who didn't know squat and was later canned. After that project, I started on a Y2K inventory and assessment at StorageTek. While this project was a little more fun, and the people were great, SHL had a ridiculous methodology for doing Y2K assessments. So we ended up re-writing most of their methodology and used it pretty successfully. It was a cool project because I was doing presentations to all the head honchos at StorageTek and I felt like I was rubbing shoulders with the elite crowd. I met Julie at MCI new-hire training in January 1998, and doubled my salary in March 1998 by becoming a contractor with IBM. The rest of the story can be found in how I started Raible Designs.
Erik gave me the link to this slashdot article, which references the W3C's website:
15 November 2002: W3C is pleased to
announce the advancement of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)
1.1 and Mobile SVG to
Proposed Recommendations. Comments are welcome through 20 December. SVG delivers vector graphics, text, and
images to the Web in XML. SVG 1.1 separates the SVG language into
reusable building blocks. Mobile SVG re-combines them into two profiles
optimized for cellphones and pocket computers. (News archive)
You would think that this CNET article would have said something about Mobile SVG, but no dice. I think Mobile SVG will make huge inroads considering that the alternative and how lightweight it is.
Yeah, what he said!
I've invalidated my RSS feed by including relative URL references inside some of the IMG tags. Question: if I am required
to include a LINK element in my RSS feed, is there a reason RSS
aggregators can't use it to resolve relative links? The $REMOTE_HOST or
equivalent? Given that people have been using relative URLs in pages
for years, I'd expect RSS tools to be a bit more flexible in this
regard. I mean, browsers can handle relative URIs, right?
Scott holds a lot more clout than I do in the web world - I'll be surprised if his post doesn't cause waves. He'll also show you how to parse your site's XML feed with CSS and the DOM.
I got a wild itch tonight and decided to make this site Section 508 Approved. All I really needed to do what do a little code alteration within the forms (search and theme switcher) in the menu. I had to add