Web Design Topic
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Web Standards
A broad term referring to the W3C recommendations, specifically: HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.x, CSS Level 1+, DOM Level 1+, ECMAScript 262 (a.k.a., JavaScript), and XML 1.0.
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Lessons from working with Web standards
During the past five months I’ve been working on a project that’s been alluded to on this site a few times, and it will very soon be done. Once things settle down, I’ll be going into a lot more detail, but for now I’ll tease out a few things I’ve discovered: -
Canada.com goes standard
Yet another Canadian news site unveiled a standards-based redesign, this time canada.com. Unlike the Toronto Star redesign (which was likely hampered by a crusty CMS), canada.com’s mark-up is much cleaner and elegant. Not exactly semantic, but not too crufty either. -
Toronto Star goes all CSS
Well, credit where credit is due: the Toronto Star unveiled a redesign that makes it the first major news site in Canada to use a CSS-based layout. Though later than hoped, the Star’s relaunch beat The Globe and Mail by a good couple of months. -
Dream project
Imagine your dream project. Now imagine it being handed to you. What would you do? -
Seeking standards-based Web developer
Keith was mentioning it earlier, and I agree, it’s hard to find good Web standards developers. So with that in mind, consider this an open call for ones in the Toronto area. Essentially, I’m looking to hear from those who dream live Web standards, and dream semantic mark-up. Being a news junkie who knows why * html can make IE behave is a definite bonus. -
What’s the object?
The W3C concludes its two-part series on how to embed multimedia into HTML documents, and asks the Web standards community to help them QA browsers. The timing is just about perfect for this because as most reading this are no doubt aware: -
Checklist for standard-based Web development
Need a checklist? Get a one for standard-based Web development; it’s good to use when producing quality CSS in a team environment. Meanwhile, Signal vs. Noise offers some rock-solid suggestions on what to do for every new feature added -
WebStandards.TO July meeting
WebStandards.TO meets tonight at Spring Rolls at the Atrium on Bay around 7 p.m -
More on Dashboard
The Dashboard fallout continues across the Web. Mike Davidson nicely echoes my own initial feelings (“get further by getting along”), but Ian Hickson forced me to do a rethink (“a new DTD does not magically make you standards compliant”) -
Lists for Web geeks (and some Dashboard, too)
Lists, like questionnaires, seem destined to be perfect blog food, so here’s a double dose for those Web designers out there: -
Obsolescence and W3C
On the heels of the of the first call for comments on Web Forms 2.0, comes a News.com story touches on the issues behind that specifications development. Although the article focuses on Office documents, PDFs, Flash, and RSS the so-called Web standards face a similar problem. With XHTML, SVG, and XForms still born, and real progress being made by WHATWG, the W3C is risking obsolescence. (Ian Hickson writes a bit more about this in his latest posting, too.) -
“Standards-friendly” ads
The company behind XStandard, the WYSIWYG XHTML editor, has cleverly used some stock photography to create some “standards-friendly” ads -
JavaScript scrap
Bert Bos really dislikes JavaScript and Brendan Eich reacts by questioning the W3C’s relevance -
Stick the stinger on the WaSP
The Web Standards Project wants to know what effect it and Web standards in general have in your working life. For most of the Web-developing readers of this little site, standards are a way of life, and it’s easy to forget we are in the vast minority. Filling it out the WaSP’s brief survey will help the organization reach out to the majority. -
Introducing WHATWG
Some frustration, perhaps, has lead to the creation of the YABA-friendly WHATWG. The idea is, in essence, to create new technologies to extend the core Web standards (HTML, CSS, DOM and ECMA Script) and allow developers to created Web-based applications. (MozillaZine offers a good overview.) -
Elections sites fail validity test
As I mentioned yesterday, Canada’s in the midst of a federal election so Joe Clark and I (along with some other members of WebStandards.TO) thought it’d be a good idea to see how accessible and valid the five major parties’ sites were. -
New IE will be the same as the old
Ian Hickson is at the W3C’s Workshop on Web Applications and Compound Documents where he learned the version of Internet Explorer to be included with Longhorn — a.k.a, the next version of Windows — apparently still won’t support XHTML with a MIME type of “application/xhtml+xml” nor will it natively support SVG. As well, the Microsoft representatives said, according to Hickson, “significantly more comprehensive test suites” are needed before Microsoft will work on standards compliance again -
WebStandards.TO May meet
WebStandards.TO meets tonight at the Rhino in a symbolic effort to embrace Flash (the Rhino is home to Toronto’s Flash developers group); come by after 7 p.m -
Define Web standards
Signal vs. Noise is challenging people to define Web standards in 10 words or less. (Speaking of which, WebStandards.TO has its first anniversary get together tonight at Fresh on Queen at Crawford.) -
Developing with Web standards
Roger Johansson has produced a nicely-presented document on Web standards aimed at both clients and anyone learning Web design (via Webgraphics) -
Standards: to follow or not
Microsoft really likes what the Mozllia Foundation is doing. First it releases XAML to compete with XUL, now it looks like it’s taking on XPInstall with its open-source (!) WiX. Combined with its support of InfoPath over XForms, it seems Microsoft is trying, again, to create a new de facto standard at the expense of those already in existence. -
meyerweb,com redesigns; standard-based Scrabble; Martin’s throne speech
Mr. Meyer has redesigned his site, and is using a neat little trick I built into my new design (who knows when anyone but me will see it). -
Conservative Web sites; Roots looking to sweatshops?
David Akin has written an article in The Globe and Mail that reviews the Conservative Party leadership candidates’ Web sites. But how do they do on the standards count? -
Standard bitterness; Safari hacks; Movies for Me
Not sure when everything got so nasty… -
Invalid mayors
Testing to see if any of the Web site’s for Toronto's 2003 mayoral candidates validate. -
Microsoft’s XUL: XAML
Coming out from under a pile of work to alert you about XAML (which as of this moment only pulls hits from Google on the “Transaction Authority Markup Language” — not the rumoured new language from Microsoft). Eric Meyer echoes exactly my grave concerns about this. -
XForms 1.0, and more CSS modules; Eolas patent
The W3C has been busy once again. XForms 1.0 is now a proposed recommendation — this is what may be used in XHTML 2.0 — but Microsoft is already going its own way by using its own XML-based form tool in the version of Office. -
Between excess and temperance
Creating an effective, standard-compliant page can be done by remembering three simple rules and one big caveat. -
Webstandards.TO meeting; Netscape goes quietly
The next Webstandards.TO is meeting tonight. I probably won’t be making it, but you should — this month it’s at the Duke of York. -
Blatchford to the Globe; progressive enhancement; Web standard articles
Coup: Christie Blatchford is leaving the National Post to join my employer, The Globe and Mail. -
Get a newsfeed to validate; low-fi reading; libel online
The database genius also known as Rudy writes about his experiences in trying to get a news feed from ITToolbox.com working on his site and having it still validate. Anyone who has tried to do this on the client-side will recognize some of the hurdles he encounters. Oh, and his final suggestion…take it with a grain of salt. ;) -
WebStandards.TO meets; JavaScript optimization tricks
Tara Cleveland’s got details (and pics) on the first 'WebStandards.TO meet up. Not a bad turn-out given the ice storm hitting the city. -
Inaugural Webstandards.TO
David Elfstrom pointed me to a Canadian all-CSS site: the Queen’s Journal. Nice simple design, even though it doesn’t validate and has an obscenely long pulldown menu that actually causes the server to time-out (check the source). -
Standard savings; accessibility: do as we say, not as we do
ESPN.com redesigned its homepage a while back, and now uses CSS to lay the page out. Given its size, a lot of people took notice including Eric A. Meyer who interviewed ESPN.com’s associate art director Mike Davidson about the process. The second half of the interview appears this Friday. -
Standing up for standards; background-image to replace text
Adrian Holovaty has posted two excellent new items, the first is an interview with Andy King on optimization as it relates to news sites; the second is an open letter to the OJR’s editor/columnist Staci D. Kramer about the need for those same sites to support standards. The latter is an excellent argument on why standards are important, and was spurred by a shockingly naïve post to online-news suggesting it’s okay to block non-IE browsers. -
The Globe and Mail redesigns; WaSP changes the guard
The Globe and Mail has finally unveiled it’s redesign — a jello site, using XHTML and CSS (with tables) — that doesn’t come close to validating that they are working hard to make validate. The predominant feature: grey. But it is faster loading, and the design and underlying code is much cleaner. More in-depth comment will likely follow my first cursory glance. -
OJR supports Mozilla; Amazon selling subscriptions?
OJR has finally — I sent my first note to them last June — fixed it’s style sheets to properly support Gecko-based browsers. Unfortunately, on its blog, they still see the browser as Netscape 4.x and as a result serve an empty file. Were Mozilla to get the same CSS the site serves to IE, everything would be fine. Maybe it will get fixed, after all, I only mentioned it to them last October… -
New validator
The new W3C validator is now available. The changes include increased XHTML support and many bugfixes -
Trade by Numbers
The last of the two big projects I’ve been working on this month finally launched today. Although Trade by Numbers is a small, monthly e-zine, it is, I believe, the first time a globe*.com site -
Bell Globemedia Interactive lay-offs; updated validator
BGM Interactive, one of the heavyweights in the Canada Internet content game, has cut about 10 percent of its workforce. The company — my employer — operates The Globe and Mail Web sites, CTV’s Web sites, and Sympatico, among others. -
Gemini does the Web; Dogma W4
The Gemini’s have a “Most Popular Web Site” category, and are asking Canadians to vote for their favourite TV Web site. From the looks of it the first round is made up of every major Canadian TV show with a site (actually it’s only 20). By the fourth round, when five are selected, let’s hope some genuinely good sites emerge. -
Champeon and Kaiser interviewed, IE 5/Mac bug fixed
Digital Web magazine has a new issue out, and this one focuses on Web standards, specifically, an interview with Steve Champeon (List Mom for WebDesign-L) and Shirley Kaiser about the WaSP, as well as an excerpt from Zeldman’s forthcoming book, Forward Compatibility: Designing & Building With Standards. -
Standards and steganography
When standards go bad: Chuck Scholton wrote a fascinating study of the problems with the standardized list of country names. -
Lycos Europe and Web standards; JPEG fallout
Word is spreading fast about Lycos Europe’s planned switch to a valid XHTML/CSS page layouts. Lycos Germany has rolled-out the new look (though it uses tables for layout due to a high portion of Netscape 4.x users), but a version of the valid layout is being showcased at Thor Larholm’ site. -
The WaSP’s new target
With the browsers behaving, the WaSP tries to change the developers behaviour. -
Standards
The bane and beauty of the term “standard” is that it can be used in so many ways. -
The WaSP rests
They done good work. -
Online Journalism Awards; Web standards
A little while ago, I mentioned that a couple of Canadian sites were nominated in the Online Journalism Awards, unfortunately, when the winners were chosen this past Friday, neither the globeandmail.com nor CTVNEWS.com won in their category. For the record, BBC Online and Slate were the big winners of the night, each capturing the relevant General Excellence award. -
Basic Online Style Guide
A simple online stylguide for XHTML-based sites.