CSS 2.2

There are various reasons why CSS 3 is taking so long. Many of the issues are technical and can’t be avoided; problems when testing, issues with backwards compatibility and bugs with browser implementation. However there also seems to be a lot of politics involved.

Budd, Andy. Andy Budd (2007). Articles>Web Design>Standards>CSS

Use Only Block-Level Elements in Blockquotes

The blockquote element is not allowed to have text or inline elements as direct descendants. Only block-level (and in HTML 4.01 Strict, script) elements are allowed unless you use a Transitional Doctype, in which case both block-level and inline elements are allowed. But there are plenty of sites that use a Strict Doctype and still have blockquote elements that contain inline elements.

Johansson, Roger. 456 Berea Street (2007). Articles>Web Design>Standards>XHTML

Another Look at HTML 5

It has become evident to me that some of my previous comments about HTML 5 and what is going on in the HTML Working Group are the result of misunderstanding and overreacting on my part. I no longer think things are quite as bad.

Johansson, Roger. 456 Berea Street (2007). Articles>Web Design>Standards>HTML5

Is HTML 5 a Slippery Slope?

Tommy Olsson comments on the possibility of backwards compatibility and standardised error handling being bad for overall code quality.

Olsson, Tommy. 456 Berea Street (2007). Articles>Web Design>Standards>HTML5

Help Keep Accessibility and Semantics in HTML

If you think accessibility and semantics are important and should be improved in the next version of HTML, you need to act.

Johansson, Roger. 456 Berea Street (2007). Articles>Web Design>Standards>HTML

Guidelines for Creating Better Markup

I’ve mentioned several times here that I feel writing markup (or any other code, for that matter) is a craft. I take pride in writing as lean and clean code as possible. From the looks of things there aren’t a whole lot of other Web professionals that feel that way, but we do exist.

Johansson, Roger. 456 Berea Street (2007). Articles>Web Design>Standards>HTML

The Language of Accessibility

Good markup is accessible by default. As long as you’re using HTML elements in a semantically meaningful way—which you should be doing anyway, without even thinking about accessibility—then your documents will be accessible to begin with.

Keith, Jeremy. Adactio (2006). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Standards

Lame Excuses for Not Being a Web Professional

Excuses that may be valid in some circumstances are too often used to cover up somebody’s lack of knowledge about modern Web design or development.

Johansson, Roger. 456 Berea Street (2007). Articles>Web Design>Standards>Professionalism

Web Standards: It's About Quality, Not Compliance

In spite of the widespread acceptance of Web standards by a specific segment of the design and development community, hosts of professionals are working in direct opposition to these standards. A significant reason for why this is happening and how those not working with Web standards justify their activity boils down, I believe, to something regrettably simple: nomenclature.

Rutledge, Andy. AndyRutledge.com (2007). Articles>Web Design>Standards

Accessible Context-Sensitive Help with Unobtrusive DOM Scripting

This article demonstrates two methods of calling context-sensitive help in a web form: the Field Help Method and Form Help Method, in which unobtrusive DOM/JavaScript is employed to achieve the desired result. It also serves to illustrate the separation of the Structure and Behavior layers of a web page. Graceful degradation is employed to make sure that the help information is accessible if JavaScript is disabled or not available in a user agent.

Palinkas, Frank M. Opera (2008). Articles>Web Design>Standards>Help

Creating Accessible Data Tables

This article demonstrates how to code accessible data tables in (X)HTML, enabling visually impaired users who employ assistive technologies to interpret the table data. Two views of a tabular data table are presented and discussed.

Palinkas, Frank M. Opera (2008). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Standards

The Seven Rules of Unobtrusive JavaScript

I've found the following rules over the years developing, teaching and implementing JavaScript in an unobtrusive manner. They have specifically been the outline of a workshop on unobtrusive JavaScript for the Paris Web conference 2007 in Paris, France.I hope that they help you understand a bit why it is a good idea to plan and execute your JavaScript in this way. It has helped me deliver products faster, with much higher quality and a lot easier maintenance.

Heilmann, Christian. Opera (2008). Articles>Web Design>Standards>JavaScript

CSS 3 Attribute Selectors

CSS attribute selectors allow us to pinpoint the values of attributes of an element and to style that element accordingly. CSS3 introduces three new selectors that can match strings against an attribute value at the beginning, the end, or anywhere within the value.This provides powerful new ways to style elements automatically that match very specific criteria. In this article, I will put these new attribute selectors in action and create some clever CSS rules that attach icons to links based on the value of the href attribute.

Schmitt, Christopher. Opera (2008). Articles>Web Design>Standards>CSS

Semantic HTML and Search Engine Optimization

So what is POSH? No, it's not just some new clothing fashion hype amongst web designers - POSH is the acronym for Plain Old Semantic HTML. The term Semantic HTML is used for a variety of things, but it has it's origin in one objective: creating (X)HTML documents using semantic elements and attributes, as opposed to using presentational HTML.

De Valk, Joost. Opera (2008). Articles>Web Design>Standards>Search Engine Optimization

Web Video Compression

Nowadays, broadband connections are widespread amongst the internet. Finally, video can be effectively added to website. But which player and video codec to go for? And how to get your video out there? This article features some tips and tricks for compressing and delivering video to the web.

Wijering, Jeroen. JeroenWijering.com (2008). Articles>Web Design>Video>Standards

The Rise of Flash Video, Part 1

Nobody really expected the stranglehold that Apple, Microsoft and Real had on the web streaming market in 2003 to be broken. Yet by Spring 2005, just 18 months after that presentation, that is exactly what had happened. Those three web video delivery technologies practically vanished, replaced almost entirely by Flash Video. This is not to say QuickTime and Windows Media are dead technologies. They aren’t by a long shot, but when it comes to putting video on the web, the Flash Player has rapidly become the only game in town.

Green, Tom. Digital Web Magazine (2006). Articles>Web Design>Video>Standards

Free Your Embedded Data With SearchMonkey

Arguing for web standards and semantically clean and rich websites is an uphill battle. For years we had to deal with browsers that needed us to mess around with HTML just to display a document in several columns and the visual outcome was much more important than the structure.

Heilmann, Christian. Digital Web Magazine (2008). Articles>Web Design>Standards>HTML

Understanding Progressive Enhancement

Since 1994, the web development community has beaten graceful degradation’s drum. A carry-over from the engineering world, the concept was, at its core, about giving the latest and greatest browsers the full-course meal experience while tossing a few scraps to the sad folk unfortunate enough to be using Netscape 4. It worked, sure, but it didn’t really match Tim Berners-Lee’s original vision for a universally accessible web. At SXSW in 2003, Steve Champeon and Nick Finck gave a presentation titled “Inclusive Web Design For the Future.” There, they unveiled a blueprint for this new way of approaching web development. Steve also gave it a name: progressive enhancement.

Gustafson, Aaron. List Apart, A (2008). Articles>Web Design>Standards

jQuery and JavaScript Coding: Examples and Best Practices

When used correctly, jQuery can help you make your website more interactive, interesting and exciting. This article will share some best practices and examples for using the popular JavaScript framework to create unobtrusive, accessible DOM scripting effects. The article will explore what constitutes best practices with regard to Javascript and, furthermore, why jQuery is a good choice of a framework to implement best practices.

Smashing (2008). Articles>Web Design>Standards>JavaScript

Why You Should Care About the New ISO User Documentation Standard  

Why should technical communicators be interested in ISO's user documentation standard? Hayhoe discusses the various advantages of this new systems and software engineering standard, and makes an argument for how the profession can gain by adhering to it.

Hayhoe, George F. Intercom (2008). Articles>Documentation>Standards>International

Lessons from the Death of HD-DVD

Over the last few months, HD-DVD appeared to rapidly fall from its apparent position as promising new disc format–touted by supporters as being technically superior, significantly cheaper, and less restrictive–down to a harsh new reality of scheduled death. However, the fate of HD-DVD wasn’t nearly as unpredictable as some seemed to think. Here’s why HD-DVD’s end should not have been a surprise, what lessons can be learned from its death, and what its demise means for Microsoft.

Dilger, Daniel Eran. RoughlyDrafted (2008). Articles>Multimedia>Standards>DVD

Microsoft's Plot to Kill QuickTime

While almost completely invisible for years, Apple’s progress in media has resulted in overturning Microsoft’s domination of the entertainment industry, established a resistance to unchecked DRM, and has extinguished Microsoft’s efforts to establish new proprietary technologies as de facto industry standards.

RoughlyDrafted (2007). Articles>Multimedia>Standards>Video

IE Version Targeting: A Neutral Perspective

Recently, there has been a lot of buzz going around about Internet Explorer 8 and plans to include in it a feature called "version targeting." You can scour the net for blog posts and articles about version targeting, but you'll get a lot of debate and several different views on this topic, and it's difficult to pinpoint just the facts. What is version targeting? Version targeting is a way to tell Internet Explorer how it should render a page.

Rodriguez, David. Web Page Design for Designers (2008). Design>Web Design>Standards>Web Browsers

Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0

This document specifies Best Practices for delivering Web content to mobile devices. The principal objective is to improve the user experience of the Web when accessed from such devices. It is primarily directed at creators, maintainers and operators of Web sites. Readers of this document are expected to be familiar with the creation of Web sites, and to have a general familiarity with the technologies involved, such as Web servers and HTTP. Readers are not expected to have a background in mobile-specific technologies.

W3C (2008). Articles>Web Design>Wireless Web>Standards

sIFR 2.0: Rich Accessible Typography for the Masses

Over the last several months, a small group of web developers and designers have been hard at work perfecting a method to insert rich typography into web pages without sacrificing accessibility, search engine friendliness, or markup semantics. The method, dubbed sIFR (or Scalable Inman Flash Replacement), is the result of many hundreds of hours of designing, scripting, testing, and debugging.

Davidson, Mike. Mike Industries (2008). Articles>Web Design>Typography>Standards