Web accessiblity in mind (WebAIM) have published results of their screen reader survey. While reports are often boring, they are often very useful, and this is one of those reports. Screen reader use is often forgotten during the build of a website in the jungle of SEO and the like. The report graphs things like how people browse sites (i.e. whether headings are useful), how often they find skip links and how often other usability good-practices are encountered. Give it a read and improve your web build process.
Useful glossaries for web designers and developers
Another glossary I’m afraid, but you can never have too many of them. This one on Smashing Magazine covers everything from typography to marketing, CSS to print design and Twitter to even higher level things such as software development. There are loads of links to all over the intertubes, so if you’ve got a spare moment, head over to this article and get reading!
8 Tips for Maintaining a User Friendly Site in One Hour a Month
I’m sure it’s happened to you. It’s always happening to me. How easy is it to build ‘My awesome website’ which is beautifully SEO’d, completely accessible to everyone and everything only to find that after launch, it quickly turns into ‘My messy website 3.0′. It could be broken links or images, spelling mistakes or pages which somehow magically stop working. The UX Booth has written a brilliant article with suggestions as to what to check for and why it’s important. And hey, an hour a month isn’t that much time, is it.
Everything you need to know about the !important CSS declaration
It’s all too easy to use !important in your CSS to override styles. But do you really know what it means, or more importantly how and why it works? When will it not work? This great write up will try to explain all of the nuances of this overused and (in my opinion) seldom properly-used declaration.
Web Design Industry Jargon: Glossary and Resources
Know what dithering is? How about how high an Ex is? When was the last time you used SOAP? Smashing magazine has posted glossary of the terms which designers and developers simply love to use. Confusing at first, but amazingly concise single word descriptions of things are extremely useful, so if you come across a word that you don’t know, check out this list – it might be on there.
10 Essential DOM Methods & Techniques for Practical JavaScript
Now that there are so many great Javascript libraries out there (jQuery, Mootools, Prototype etc etc) it’s easy to forget – or if you’re starting out, even know – that you can do this by getting down to the nitty gritty of accessing the DOM directly. This tutorial goes through some of the more important javascript methods of DOM manipulation such as getElementById, getElementsByTagName, and then goes on to reading and writing from those nodes. Oh, and it tells you what a node is too.
HTML Forms: The Right Way(s)
There are almost too many ‘right’ ways to create forms using HTML and CSS. You could use definition lists, fully semantic fieldsets and labels, paragraphs, the possibilities are almost endless. Just no tables, please! Raleigh web design & development has written a great post detailing a few of the numerous ‘right’ ways of laying out your forms.
Override Inline Styles with CSS
Blue sky thinking, thinking outside the box and other nasty business phrases could easily be used to describe this technique. Usually, we use inline styling to override a rule in the stylesheet, this article on CSS tricks shows how to override inline styles using a stylesheet. Like all the best tricks out there, it’s just too simple. Naturally though, it doesn’t work in IE6.
Progressive Enhancement: What It Is, And How To Use It?
Progressive enhancement. Another of those web buzz words. One that I’m guilty of using. But what does it actually mean? More importantly, how do you do it? What is it for? Why should you use it? Is it difficult? All very good questions, all answered in this new post on Smashing Magazine.
[jQuery] SlideDown Animation Jump Revisited
Have you ever used jQuery animations to make your site beautiful, only to notice that the sexy animation ends with a massive jump? This post on jquery for designers explains the problem, what causes it and how to fix it. Simply reading this article might help to keep just a few more strands hair on your head.
