ABBR and ACRONYM are for User Agents, Not for End Users

The WCAG (1.0) guideline 4, checkpoint 4.2, about ABBR and ACRONYM, has for a long time been too unclear to implement. The drafts for XHTML 2.0 and WCAG 2.0 seem to have solved most problems.

Tverskov, Jesper. Smack the Mouse (2004). Articles>Web Design>HTML

Accessible Tables

There is no question that the vast majority of tables on the Web are layout tables, used to structure the visual appearance of the page. Often the structure of tables is remarkably complex, with tables nested in tables as much as seven deep.

Thatcher, Jim. JimThatcher.com (2005). Design>Web Design>Accessibility>HTML

Accessing Form Elements Array with JavaScript

This article shows how you can access an array of HTML form elements using JavaScript.

DevBay (2005). Design>Web Design>DHTML

Add Zip to Your Site without Coding  

Wilkinson offers tips on adding free JavaScript subroutines to Web sites. She lists several Web sites that give away free scripts.

Wilkinson, Theresa A. Intercom (2000). Design>Web Design>DHTML

Adding Sticky Buttons to a Framed Site

Describes how to create a type of DHTML interactivity using Adobe GoLive.

Shadovitz, Deborah. Mac Design Magazine (2003). Design>Web Design>DHTML>Adobe GoLive

Adding Zip to Your Site Without Coding

I have been playing around with scripting for about six months now. I would by no means call myself a programmer yet, but I have successfully added many scripts to various Web sites. How did I do it without attending any programming classes or immersing myself with programming books? I used free scripts from Web sites. I have found many Web sites that offer scripts for just about anything you can imagine.

Leonard-Wilkinson, Theresa A. W-edge Design (2000). Design>Web Design>DHTML

Advanced HTML Tutorial

HTML is made up of a great many elements, a lot of which are overlooked, forgotten or just unknown to many web designers. Although with a basic knowledge of HTML you can develop a website, to take advantage of many of the advanced features, and to make pages fully compatible, it is useful to learn these less popular tags.

Gowans, David. Free Webmaster Help (2001). Design>Web Design>HTML

Ajax

Asynchronous JavaScript And XML, or its acronym, Ajax (Pronounced A-jacks), is a Web development technique for creating interactive web applications. The intent is to make web pages feel more responsive by exchanging small amounts of data with the server behind the scenes, so that the entire Web page does not have to be reloaded each time the user makes a change. This is meant to increase the Web page's interactivity, speed, and usability.

Wikipedia. Articles>Web Design>DHTML>Ajax

Ajax Mistakes

Ajax is an awesome technology that is driving a new generation of web apps, from maps.google.com to colr.org to backpackit.com. But Ajax is also a dangerous technology for web developers, its power introduces a huge amount of UI problems as well as server side state problems and server load problems.

Bosworth, Alex. Sourcelabs.com (2005). Articles>Web Design>DHTML>Ajax

Ajax Wireframing Approaches

Goes over a few techniques and approaches we use to create the foundation of every prototype--wireframes. In addition to serving as documentation for those working with the markup, wireframes are a great way to create screenshots and debug rendering problems that are happening during DOM manipulation. Whenever we find something looking funny during the development process, we always refer back to our wireframes to see if it’s a markup / presentation problem. If it renders right in the browser statically, then we know to look for the problem in the JavaScript or server side programming.

Hale, Kevin. Particletree (2006). Design>Web Design>DHTML>Ajax

Alter Table Row Background Colors Using JavaScript

Many sites that present tabular data use alternating background colors to increase the readability of that data. And as I developed a site, I realised I wanted to do that, too. The problem? In my case the table was not generated by a server side application or script of which you can find numerous examples on the Web.

Svanberg, Kennet. SitePoint (2005). Design>Web Design>CSS>DHTML

Alternative Style: Working With Alternate Style Sheets

So you have an XML document. You’ve also been a good little web developer and used style sheets to control what your document looks like. You’ve even gone the extra mile and created several alternative style sheets to show how hardcore you are. Great. But now you need a cross–browser way to dynamically switch between the style sheets.

Sowden, Paul. List Apart, A (2002). Design>Web Design>HTML

Amazing DHTML: But is it Useful?

Dynamic HTML is not another HTML standard, but is a term used to describe techniques by which Web pages can be made dynamic using JavaScript, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and the Document Object Model (DOM). It works on the more recent versions of Internet Explorer and Netscape.

HyperWrite (2005). Design>Web Design>DHTML

Anatomy of HTML Tags

This tutorial describes some of the main attributes that HTML tags can feature.

Hunt, Ben. Web Design From Scratch (2006). Design>Web Design>HTML

Art and Culture

This site offers a unique approach to contextual navigation, and one that has gotten the attention of many reviewers. From the site: 'ArtandCulture.com is a dynamic destination that delivers unique access to the best arts and cultural content and related products available on the web today....focused on creating the context that makes information truly meaningful.' In this review, I'll focus on some of the interesting navigation strategies the site presents.

Danzico, Liz. Bobulate (2003). Design>Web Design>User Interface>DHTML

AuthorIT: Resizing Graphics using JavaScript Code

My client wanted screen shots in their CHM, but the screens were very large thus creating problems when printing a topic. With some help from Dave Gash, I got the large screen shots to open at 50% size, with a function for the user to resize them to 100% either all at once or one at a time. The function also toggled back to 50% at the user's discretion. This solved the problem of large screen shots in the online help, while allowing error-free printing to occur.

Bracey, Rhonda. CyberText Consulting (2003). Resources>Documentation>Software>DHTML

Avoiding Automatic Refresh

Describes an alternative to automatic page refresh in HTML. Automatic page refresh can confuse users with cognitive disabilities when a page reloads without the user's request. This article provides you with instructions on how to apply explicit manual control of page refreshing.

Microsoft (2003). Design>Web Design>Accessibility>DHTML

Back to Basics

Web documents are nothing more than Source. For all of the inspiration, thought, and sweat that might go into a page, it is merely a mess of characters that happens to contain a lot of brackets. After five and a half years of actively building pages, it's occurring to me that a lot of developers haven't figured this out. What I see is not what they get.

Henick, Ben. List Apart, A (2001). Design>Web Design>HTML

A Backward-Compatible Style Sheet Switcher

You asked for it, you’ve got it: an Open Source alternate Style Sheet switcher that even works in Netscape Navigator 4.

Ludwin, Daniel. List Apart, A (2002). Design>Web Design>CSS>DHTML

Basic JavaScript with Examples

Since the day Microsoft built support for JavaScript into Internet Explorer 3.0, Netscape's client-side language has become the de facto standard for enhancing web pages at the browser. In this full-length excerpt from Practical JavaScript Programming, author Reaz Hoque explains the basics of client-side scripting. He also gives you some neat scripts that can enhance your web pages, making them impressively interactive. Important code snippets available in this article include a browser detection script, capable of offering tailored content based on broswer version or type. For instance, it's important (unless you like crashing visitors' computers) to only serve JavaScript 1.1 code to Netscape Navigator 3.0 or later.

Hoque, Reaz. Intranet Journal (1997). Resources>Tutorials>DHTML

A Beginner's Guide to HTML  

Answers to questions like: where do Web pages come from? What are all those brackets in the text, anyway? How much HTML do I have to learn? How can I get started quickly? What kinds of HTML authoring tools are available to me?

Quesenbery, Whitney. STC Proceedings (1997). Articles>Web Design>HTML

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

A Better Image Rotator

About a year ago, I wrote an article, introducing a method for displaying a random image every time someone visits a web page. Administration was simple: just add or remove images from a folder on the server, and they would appear (or disappear, respectively) from the pool of random images being displayed on that page.

Benjamin, Dan. List Apart, A (2004). Design>Web Design>Graphic Design>DHTML

Better Living Through XHTML

Everything you wanted to know about converting from HTML to XHTML, including why you’d want to, tools that help, changes in the way browsers display XHTML pages, shortcuts, bugs, workarounds, and other tips you won’t find elsewhere.

Zeldman, Jeffrey. List Apart, A (2002). Design>Web Design>XHTML

Block vs. Inline Elements

HTML elements can be displayed either in block or inline style. The difference between these is one of the most basic things you need to know in order to use CSS effectively.

Hunt, Ben. Web Design From Scratch (2006). Design>Web Design>HTML>CSS