A Beginner's Guide to HTML and Web Design  

The best place to learn about HTML is on the Web itself. A few of the best resources for exploring HTML design are listed here.

Quesenbery, Whitney. STC Proceedings (1998). Articles>Web Design>Standards>HTML

Change vs. Stability in Web Usability Guidelines

A remarkable 80% of findings from the Web usability studies in the 1990s continue to hold today.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2007). Articles>Web Design>Usability>Standards

Data Lives Forever

Web data (mainly in the form of pages) should live much longer than Web hardware and software. Even though most users go to the newer pages, older pages will still be of interest to some users.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1997). Articles>Web Design>Standards

Review: Designing With Web Standards

Jeffrey Zeldman shows us how we should be doing things, plain and simple.

Accessify (2003). Articles>Reviews>Web Design>Standards

Draft 2 of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

It's time to take a look at the working draft of WCAG 2.0. You'll see a fresh approach to a formidable challenge.

McAlpine, Rachel. Quality Web Content (2005). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Standards

Evolution Trumps Usability Guidelines

'Use a Search Box instead of a link to a Search page.' This is one guideline from the plethora of recently created usability guidelines to help designers produce more usable web sites. It makes sense. After all, there are more than 42 million web sites on the Internet. It should be simple to study these sites and put together a list of 'do's' and 'don'ts' that, when followed, will produce easy-to-use sites. But...

Spool, Jared M. uiGarden (2006). Articles>Usability>Standards>Web Design

Firefox Spread Leads to Design Scrutiny, Built-In RSS Feeds

Are the browser wars back? As Firefox and Netscape gain steam, site designers can avoid losing users by focusing on Web standards. Plus, built-in RSS is here -- warts and all.

Glaser, Mark. Online Journalism Review (2005). Articles>Web Design>Standards

Five Questions to Ask Your Web Development Team

As a client or manager responsible for a web development project you don't need to know anything about how a standards based web site is created. However you do need to know that your project is addressing these five important issues.

Allsopp, John. Western Civilization (2005). Articles>Web Design>Project Management>Standards

Governing Good Web Site Design

Looking for a means to judge the quality of a web design? A good place to start is with the US Federal Government, which provides more than 175 research-based guidelines.

Janisch, Troy. Icon Interactive (2004). Articles>Internet>Web Design>Standards

HTML 5 and XHTML 2

While the intention of both HTML V5 and XHTML V2 is to improve on the existing versions, the approaches the developers chose to make those improvements is very different. And with differing philosophies come distinct results. For the first time in many years, the direction of upcoming browser versions is uncertain. Uncover the bigger picture behind the details of these two standards.

de Jonge, Adriaan. IBM (2007). Articles>Web Design>Standards>XHTML

HTML 5 Timeline

Firefox 2.0.0.10 broke its implementation of the HTML5 canvas element and guess what, the world noticed. Actual websites started breaking because they relied on the canvas functionality to work. The point is that we expect implementations of HTML5 to happen way before the fifteen year mark. In fact, the fifteen year mark includes having all features at least implemented in two different (shipping) products in the same way with the additional requirement that they have a decent amount of market penetration. This means that when the specification finally makes it to W3C Recommendation it has already proven itself.

van Kesteren, Anne. annevankesteren.nl (2007). Articles>Web Design>Standards>HTML

HTML Applications: Introducing the HTA File

The letters HTA are meant to stand for HTML Application. The technology was developed by Microsoft, so is a proprietary concept, and only works in conjunction with Internet Explorer (specifically version 5 and above).

HyperWrite (2005). Articles>Web Design>Standards>Microsoft Windows

Interview with DMXzone's Bruce Lawson

Find out why self-confessed non-techie Bruce Lawson has been winning friends and influencing people with his support for web standards and web accessibility.

Lawson, Bruce. Accessify (2003). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Standards

Keeping Your Elements' Kids in Line with Offspring

CSS selectors are handy things. They make coding CSS easier, sure, but they can also help keep your markup clean.

Bischoff, Alex. List Apart, A (2008). Articles>Web Design>Standards>CSS

Linking in XHTML 2.0

As a fundamental part of the Web, hypertext linking has been the subject of repeated attempts at standardization beyond the basic format allowed in simple HTML. Such attempts can be characterized as efforts to balance machine processing ability with authoring convenience. The latest specification in this area, XHTML 2.0, just might have gotten it right.

Dubinko, Micah. IBM (2005). Articles>Web Design>Standards>XHTML

Migrating from HTML to XHTML and XML - Part II

This is the second part of a two-part article describing a detailed methodology for migrating HTML files to the structure and flexibility of XHTML and/or XML.

James-Tanny, Char. WritersUA (2006). Articles>Web Design>Standards>XHTML

The Mysterious Acronym Tag

There is a seldom-used tag called 'acronym'. It was originally mark up, well, acronyms. There is a very similar tag, also seldom-used, called 'abbr', which is intended to mark up abbreviations. Both of these tags were introduced in HTML 4.0. On the face of it, apart from marking up the text, these inline tags do little else.

HyperWrite (2002). Articles>Web Design>Standards>HTML

New Elements in HTML 5

HTML 5 introduces new elements to HTML for the first time since the last millennium. New structural elements include aside, figure, and section. New inline elements include time, meter, and progress. New embedding elements include video and audio. New interactive elements include details, datagrid, and command.

Harold, Elliotte Rusty. IBM (2007). Articles>Web Design>Standards>HTML

Omniweb and Standards

How does Omniweb fare when it comes to web standards? Earlier versions, while highly praised for an elegant user interface and strong support of international character sets, fell drastically short in CSS and W3C DOM support.

Waferbaby. List Apart, A (2002). Articles>Web Design>Standards>Web Browsers

Opera's Lie Blasts Microsoft on IE and Web Standards Support

Take a look at how Opera's Hakon Lie publicly blasted Microsoft for it's lack of support of Web Standards! Lie states. While this isn't new, I think it's important for accessibility developers to continue supporting the Mac accessibility community.

Paciello, Mike. Paciello Group, The (2007). Articles>Web Design>Standards>Blogs

Optimized and Predictable Ajax Applications

Wouldn't it be nice for developers if all browsers, computer models, and Ajax application users were the same? Maybe, but the reality is that they are not. Developers face a myriad of challenges when developing applications that behave predictably across browsers, computers, and individual user settings. When users transfer Ajax applications from one browser type to another (and especially when they transfer an Ajax application into a Web service portal), they're not guaranteed the same browser experience because of each browser's inherent limitations. In this article, author Judith Myerson gives a brief discussion of these limitations and what pitfalls to avoid, including some helpful solutions for optimizing browser differences.

Myerson, Judith. IBM (2007). Articles>Web Design>Standards>Ajax

Plus ça Change...

Westciv's John Allsopp sees a potentially bleak future for the dream that was web standards. Microsoft have overwhelming dominence of the browser playing field, despite brave efforts by Opera and Mozilla. They also have no intention to upgrade IE 6 until the release of Longhorn in 2006. So what is the point in innovating with new and exciting features in CSS and xhtml when no browser will support them? The only source of hope is that the gap left by Microsoft's development road map leaves room for a brave or foolish player to step in.

Allsopp, John. Western Civilization (2004). Articles>Web Design>Standards

A Preview of HTML 5

HTML 4 has been around for nearly a decade now, and publishers seeking new techniques to provide enhanced functionality are being held back by the constraints of the language and browsers.

Hunt, Lachlan. List Apart, A (2007). Articles>Web Design>Standards>HTML

Put XHTML 1.0 Strict and Transitional to Work  

As its name suggests, XHTML--which is considered the successor to HTML 4--is a combination of HTML and XML. By combining the power of XML and HTML, XHTML makes Web content more accessible to devices such as phones, handhelds, and televisions. XHTML 1.0 is broken up into what the W3C refers to as three flavors: Strict, Transitional, and Frameset. In this article, I focus on the two most useful, Strict and Transitional.

Morton, Shawn. TechRepublic (2003). Articles>Web Design>Standards>XHTML