A Web Design and Development Blog
Wednesday, September 17th, 2008
Over the last few weeks I’ve been working in spare moments on a fun little project with real-time updates of a shared web page. Fun stuff, but not the point of this post. What I’m interested in here is that in order to get this working, I wanted to use comet.
Wednesday, August 27th, 2008
Over at Opera Developer Network (which is called ODIN, how cool is that?), Bruce reports that Target has settled in the class action brought by the National Federation for the Blind. In essence a good result in that:
Target shall ensure [...] that blind guests using screen-reader software may acquire the same information and engage in the same transactions as are available to sighted guests with substantially equivalent ease of use.
As Bruce points out, it’s visual-impairment specific, so it’s not a win for all kinds of accessibility. Though it does mention Jim Thatcher doing yearly assessments of their accessibility as well, and as far as I can see that looks more general. Anyway, it’ll be interesting to see how this shakes things up stateside and if it has a wider impact (Target’s e-commerce is provided by some outfit called Amazon).
In other news, it looks like JAWS 10 will support WAI ARIA Live Regions. Which is a step forward in accessibility for Javascript-based web apps and virtual-buffer issues. Of course it’s the bleeding edge, so it’ll take a while to trickle down to common usage… Another one to keep an eye on though. You can download the public beta and try it out (JAWS 9 license required).
Thursday, June 12th, 2008
With web development it’s easy to feel you need to know about everything.
On the front end it’s essential to understand markup semantics, accessibility issues, DOM scripting, CSS and the multitude of cross-browser bugs. Then you need a basic understanding of interaction design, how interfaces work and how to structure a site. Plus, a sprinkling of design savvy is handy too, knowing your line-height from your ligature will keep you in good graces of designers. Then, if you venture to back-end code you might need to use PHP and Apache one day, ASP.NET the next and Django on Friday. If you’re feeling optimistic you might want to take in search engine optimisation while you’re there.
It can all seem a bit daunting if you’re new to all this.
One of the most useful things I learned, fortunately early on, is that sometimes it’s best to hold information lightly, but hold your information sources tight. You don’t have to know every PHP function when the manual is online 24/7. Hunting a browser bug is easier if you have quirksmode, position is everything, the Sitepoint Reference and Firebug on hand, and with the web you do. Learning how to navigate MSDNs labyrinthine architecture is an artform all its own, of course, but the information is there if you can understand the mindset… Even if you can’t there are great conferences, helpful forums and local networks to point you in the right direction.
Knowing everything isn’t necessary. Knowing where to find what you need. That’s essential.
© 2008 Matt Machell