Monday, 8th July 2002
Zeldman on accessibility
Jeffry Zeldman: Many web practitioners still believe that accessiblity is an ugly, no-frills affair. Not true.
An excellent piece on accessibility issues.
Language independant storage
Today’s (obvious) XML realisation: Using XML for storage gives you a platform and language independant storage layer. If you later want to rewrite an application in a different language the data is there and ready to be processed, with no conversion necessary. OK so it’s something that is shouted from the rooftops by XML advocates at every available opportunity but today I realised it for myself :)
Why workflow?
I’m having trouble understanding the importance of workflow in a CMS. As I see it, managing content assets and controlling which assets are ready for publication can be thought of as two very seperate processes. After all, content can and should be deployed in a whole variety of ways. A piece of content that is not yet ready for publication in a brochure may well be ready for publication on a web site (or may be fit a site aimed at one audience but not yet ready for a site targetted elsewhere). Why tie the publication readiness of an item of content directly to the content, when it would make more sense to attach it to the place where the content will be published—so a site editor can decide when content is ready for publication without permanently altering the status of the content. Or have I completely missed the point?
New bookmarklet
webgraphics have a new bookmarklet which measures the “weight” of a page (the combined size of the page and its graphics) and displays it along with an estimate of download times over different connections. Unfortunately it does not measure external JS or CSS files, and does not work in Mozilla. If you’re in to bookmarklets (explained here) take a look at webgraphics’ excellent favelets collection at the bottom of the right hand column of their front page.
Sites bow to IE
CNET: Even though all the major browsers are considered to be up to snuff on standards compliance, some Web authors still find it easier to code directly to IE--and test only with IE--rather than to open standards.
Tell us something we didn’t know. Steve Champeon replies over at the Web Standards project and highlights some inaccuracies in the article but the basic message remains unfortunately true.