Archive for June, 2005
Websites alienate Firefox users
This morning the BBC reports on a survey made of 100 leading consumer web sites – revealing that 3% were turning away non-IE users and a further 7% were using IE-specific code. The article then went on to explain why web standards were important – not only to users of Firefox but also in terms of accessibility.
The research, by Web-testing firm SciVisum, is also reported by The Register, which quotes the director of Usability firm Human Factors International describing the question of making a site accessible to multiple browsers as “a no brainer” … well, exactly.
Missing out and meeting up
Had I realised just how cool @media was going to be before it sold out, I would have got a ticket. It sounds like a fantastic time was had by all. We did however, manage to meet up with Molly for an evening, and after making her hang around in dodgy parts of London where the Small Person was at a film shoot (chaperoned by me wearing my theatre mother hat) we put the world to rights over several bottles of wine. So we managed to catch up with all the gossip despite failing to get to a conference that was practically on our doorstep … must try harder next time!
DHTML Utopia: Modern Web Design Using JavaScript and DOM
I remember the first time I saw an image rollover on a web site, and being blown away by the sheer coolness of such a thing. Of course I immediately had to learn how to do it. However, I never really liked JavaScript much after the initial ‘wooo I can make things move’ thing wore off. It got in the way, was a horror to get working cross-browser, and was responsible for all sorts of evil flashing, popping up and generally annoying behaviour by web sites. In recent times people began to move away from such things and clients stopped asking for anything more than a bit of simple form validation and I was happy to hang up my JavaScript hat.
I’ve had to dig that hat back out of the cupboard again recently, and its got a bit dusty while it was in there. I’ve had more requests for functionality that requires JavaScript – because a new breed of JavaScript is appearing, creating functionality that assists those with JavaScript enabled but doesn’t destroy the experience for those who do not.
DHTML Utopia is a book that supports that responsible use of JavaScript – as an application developer I’m happy to read reminders such as, “Client-side validation can only ever be an enhancement to a secure system” (Chapter 6: Forms and Validation) and the section explaining how to integrate client and server-side validation is a fantastic thing to include in a book like this. Too many books seem to forget that whatever part of a system we are developing it has to work with the application as a whole, this book doesn’t fall into that trap at all. The standards geek in me rejoices at the book’s approach to semantic mark-up and best practices with accessibility considered throughout, and the part of me that fears JavaScript has her hand held with a step by step approach to explaining the examples.
This is a really impressive book by Stuart Langridge, it’s easy to read despite explaining the examples to a level that should get even the most reluctant JavaScript developer able to adapt these to their own requirements and write their own scripts, and is full of sensible, real-world advice. It also mentions beer quite a lot and has marvellous quotations at the beginning of each chapter.
If you are needing to get up to speed with modern DHTML then this is a great place to start. The first 4 chapters are available as a download free from Sitepoint so you don’t need to take my word for it!
