The Raven Archive

Archive for the ‘ Web Accessibility ’ Category

Cross Browser Testing

Wednesday, November 26th, 2008

I recently started using a new service called CrossBrowserTesting, and it’s so incredibly awesome I felt compelled to write a review.  First some background… Browser compatibility is a difficult challenge for all web designers and developers.  The process of debugging HTML, CSS, or Javascript problems that only occur on specific ...

Firefox and Safari Are Aggressively Driving New Ways to Publish and Experience the Internet

Monday, August 25th, 2008

Apple just released Safari 4.0 Developer Preview to its developers. The new browser comes with several new features, including: CSS support for masks, gradients, reflections, and specifying a named canvas. Rudimentary support for the WAI-ARIA (Rich Internet Application) and cross-site XMLHttpRequest specifications. The ability to send messages between documents Storage ...

sIFR 3 Beta is Getting Closer to its Final Release

Wednesday, December 26th, 2007

Mark Wubben announced on Wednesday (December 26, 2007) that sIFR was getting closer to its final release. In a message to all of the developers and beta testers, he said: Good news, I’m running out of bugs to fix. Pretty much the only thing left to do is support page ...

Implementing Contextual Feedback and Help to Improve the Usability of Web Applications

Wednesday, December 12th, 2007

Traditionally, communication between developers and users has been sparse. Developers have always provided limited help through a single help window and users rarely get the chance to offer feedback and bug reports. However, those limitations have been changing in recent years. Many software developers have created help forums where users ...

12 Steps for Creating Beautiful HTML Code

Friday, November 2nd, 2007

There’s been a movement in the past several years to cleanup HTML code. Messy markup has contributed to rendering bugs, difficult maintenance and also poor search engine performance. For example, using HTML that doesn’t display the data (content) semantically can have a severe impact on a website’s SERPs. Using modern ...

ABC News Redesign: A Case Study In What Not To Do

Sunday, April 29th, 2007

One of my favorite news websites is was ABCNews.com. They recently redesigned their website and destroyed most of what I liked about it. Their old design was similar to the New York Times. They had an easy to read home page that made all of the headlines visible. I could ...

Breadcrumb Navigation: Hierarchy or History?

Wednesday, April 11th, 2007

Breadcrumbs are a form of secondary navigation for websites. They’re useful, because they: show the user where they are provide one-click access for section hierarchy are small and take up very little space are potential SEO keyword targets I try to use breadcrumbs whenever I can and I find they’re ...

WebDU 2007: SEO Down Under

Thursday, March 22nd, 2007

The WebDU 2007 conference has been jam packed with excellent speakers, talented designers and fun events. Adobe has a very strong presence at this conference and many of the sessions touched base on many of their new and upcoming products like Apollo and CS3. I’m not allowed to talk about ...

New Semantic Elements Being Considered for HTML 5

Friday, January 12th, 2007

Roger Johansson posted an interesting entry on his site entitled, “Elements and Attributes in HTML 5.” In his entry he lists some new elements that are being considered for inclusion in HTML 5 (the next major version of HTML). article A section of a page that consists of a composition ...

sIFR 3 Beta Released

Monday, December 18th, 2006

On Monday, December 18th, Mark Wubben announced the 1st beta version of sIFR 3. Mark stated he feels this release is fit for widespread use. For those who are not familiar with sIFR, here’s a definition from the sIFR WIKI: sIFR allows website headings, pull-quotes and other elements to be ...