Retooling Slashdot with Web Standards Part II

In Part I, we showed how Slashdot could save money and reduce bandwidth requirements by converting to semantic XHTML markup and CSS layout. In Part II, we explore how standards-compliant markup and deft use of CSS could make Slashdot (and your sites) play nicely in print and on handheld devices.

Frommelt, Daniel M. List Apart, A (2003). Design>Web Design>Standards>CSS

Safari FAQ for Web Developers

Most developers are happy to follow the W3C guidelines and have their pages 'just work,' with no need for browser-specific HTML. Safari has the features you'd expect of a modern browser plus a few unique ones; understanding these, as well as a few Safari development tricks, will ensure your pages work exactly the way you and your users expect.

Apple Inc. (2006). Design>Web Design>Standards>Web Browsers

Same DOM Errors, Different Browser Interpretations

Have you ever looked at how the different browsers handle the same DOM errors? As this article from Opera JS guru Hallvord R. M. Steen points out, their different interpretations can be surprising.

Steen, Hallvord R.M. Vitamin (2008). Articles>Web Design>Standards>Web Browsers

Silverlight 1.0: Getting Started

Silverlight facilitates the creation of rich web content and applications using a lightweight add-on that is friendly to both designers and developers.

Nathan, Adam. Dr. Dobb's (2007). Design>Web Design>Standards>Silverlight

Some Thoughts about SOAP versus REST on Security

REST is the underlying architecture of the World Wide Web and its two core specifications, URIs and HTTP. It has been proposed that instead of using new-from-scratch Web Services technologies we can get much more bang for our buck by understanding the full generality of what we've got. A community has arisen around this idea and we spend our time proving that what the Web already has is better than what is being developed. This page addresses the security weaknesses of the SOAP approach.

Prescod.net. Design>Web Design>Standards>XML

A Standardista's Alphabet

The Lesser (or Badged) Standardista will include badges on their site to indicate which level of automated testing their site has passed, whereas the Greater (or Smug) Standardista frowns on the use of badges, and insists on double-checking every checkpoint manually.

Pickard, Jack. List Apart, A (2006). Design>Web Design>Standards>XHTML

Standards for Online Graphs

A government organisation in New Zealand wants to create standards for graphs, especially online graphs. Until now, we haven't been able to find any existing standards, so we will have to start from scratch.

McAlpine, Rachel. Quality Web Content (2005). Design>Web Design>Standards>Charts and Graphs

The Standards Way to Do Dynamic Data

Somewhere in between presenting static information graphics and complex, interactive data dashboards there’s a need for a way to visualize moderately dynamic data on the web. Oftentimes the solutions you see implemented are clunky, for example, manually creating multiple frames of various data points and uploading them by hand.

Madden, Sean. Vitamin (2008). Articles>Web Design>Standards>Interaction Design

STC and the W3C  

As technologies like XML, content management software (CMS), and single sourcing continue to seep into technical communication, they bring demands for cost-effective development, faster time-to-market, and automation. Meeting these demands will require standards for coding, language, metadata, and other such elements. The good old days of 'winging it' in documentation are coming to an end.

Perlin, Neil E. Intercom (2004). Design>Web Design>Content Management>Standards

The Trouble with Web Standards

You may mistrust web standards because of bad experiences with buggy browsers. Or you might have converted a site from HTML to XHTML, only to discover that their layouts suddenly looked different in standards-compliant browsers. Don't give in to the dark side! Web standards are here to stay.

Zeldman, Jeffrey. Creative Pro (2007). Articles>Web Design>Standards>XHTML

They Shoot Browsers, Don't They?

Standards-aware developers, by their very nature, will object to adding a line of unnecessary markup to their documents just to get one single browser to behave as it should by default.

Keith, Jeremy. List Apart, A (2008). Articles>Web Design>Standards>Web Browsers

To Hell with WCAG 2

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 were published in 1999 and quickly grew out of date. The proposed new WCAG 2.0 is the result of five long years’ work by a Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) committee that never quite got its act together. In an effort to be all things to all web content, the fundamentals of WCAG 2 are nearly impossible for a working standards-compliant developer to understand. WCAG 2 backtracks on basics of responsible web development that are well accepted by standardistas. WCAG 2 is not enough of an improvement and was not worth the wait.

Clark, Joe. List Apart, A (2006). Design>Web Design>Accessibility>Standards

To Use or Not to Use: An XHTML Roadmap for Designers

The problem with XHTML 1.0 isn't a matter of strength, or of importance. XHTML is both strong and important--and not just for markup snobs and hardcore developers. It's not that XHTML 1.0 has a particularly high learning curve. It doesn't--in fact, it's quite easy to learn. And, it's not that XHTML 1.0 doesn't display in browsers both current and past. When written with awareness of cross-browser considerations--just as with HTML, it does. The problem lies in the fact that XHTML is, quite simply, misunderstood.

Holzschlag, Molly E. Digital Web Magazine (2001). Design>Web Design>Standards>XHTML

Toward a More Standards-Compliant Internet Explorer

Reveals a major flaw in Internet Explorer when dealing with floats. If you are serious about moving from a table layout to a CSS layout, you must read this article first.

Gallant, John P. Digital Web Magazine (2003). Articles>Web Design>Standards>Web Browsers

A Tutorial in Cross-Browser DHTML

In this article we will look at several techniques, some general, some specific, for constructing Dynamic HTML code which bridges the gap between Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Netscape's Navigator-- specifically, the gap between Netscape 4.x and Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 and 5.

Weiss, Aaron. Intranet Journal. Design>Web Design>Standards>DHTML

Twelve Lessons for Those Afraid of CSS and Standards

if you're starting to work with CSS, everything you've learned to this point probably feels useless, or worse than useless.

Henick, Ben. List Apart, A (2006). Design>Web Design>CSS>Standards

Using XHTML/CSS for an Effective Search Engine Optimization Campaign

We’re going to be focusing entirely on the benefits of using XHTML and CSS to show you how to improve the readability of your code for search engine spiders, maintain a good content-to-code ratio without going beyond file-size and word-count limits, and how to use CSS to mimic common image effects.

Olejniczak, Brandon. List Apart, A (2003). Design>Web Design>Standards>XHTML

Version Targeting: Threat or Menace?

Real DOM support is a game changer. Enabled by default, it would bring many sites to their knees. That would break the web, and not in quotes. Providing IE8's greater compliance on an opt-in basis is the only way to get everyone over the scripting hump.

Zeldman, Jeffrey. List Apart, A (2008). Articles>Web Design>Standards>Web Browsers

The W3C: Shaping the Future of Technology  

This column continues my focus on the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) by describing some activities and non-W3C technologies that I encountered at the W3C Technical Plenary, held in early March outside Cannes, France.

Perlin, Neil E. Intercom (2004). Design>Web Design>Standards

W3Compliant Sites

W3 Compliant Sites is a collection of web sites that were created by designers that conform with the W3C standards. It provides the opportunity for them to display their work and ideas in a community that shares common interests.

Ho, Sean. W3Compliant. Resources>Web Design>Standards>Usability

WCAG 2.0 Baseline Concept

In order to encourage vendors of non-W3C technologies to include accessibility features in their technologies, and in recognition of emerging technologies that are beneficial for the Web, WCAG 2.0 is technology neutral. Rather than list each technology that the guidelines cover, WCAG 2.0 introduces the concept of a baseline. This post attempts to explain what is meant by this baseline concept.

Lemon, Gez. Juicy Studio (2006). Design>Web Design>Accessibility>Standards

WCAG 2.0 Preview: So What's New?

This article reviews the new Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 2.0 and was published in SPIN Magazine. The article summaries the new guidelines and identifies key revisions and changes made to the original WCAG version 1.0.

Palmer, Mark. User Vision (2007). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Standards

Web Accommodation for the Vision-Impaired  

Accessibility for vision-impaired users of corporate websites is becoming a critical issue. The federal government requires its agencies to provide effective, equal access to electronically delivered information. The W3C launched its accessibility initiative in 1999 and continues to expand it. Court rulings are mixed, as the judicial system struggles to clarify accommodation in relation to the web environment. Students in the Jack David Armold Honor Society at DeVry University researched, collaborated, and developed a community service website to convince corporations that web accommodation for visionimpaired users made financial sense.

Hawkes, Lory. STC Proceedings (2003). Design>Web Design>Accessibility>Standards

Web Clients Fatten Up with OpenLaszlo

OpenLaszlo is a rich client application architecture that uses Macromedia Flash as a deployment vehicle. Declarative in design, OpenLaszlo relies upon JavaScript for logic and offers advantages over traditional Flash development, including an advanced UI constraints system, an object-oriented design methodology, and built-in support for Web services and a variety of flavors of Remote Procedure Call (RPC). This article details the basic concepts of OpenLaszlo, and gives examples of situations in which an OpenLaszlo solution might be beneficial.

Woods, Joshua M. IBM (2006). Articles>Web Design>Standards>Flash