Category: HTML5

Useful Links: Open Letter, Blog Action Day, Free Culture, Usability, HTML5

An Open Letter to Mark Shuttleworth at Geek Feminism Blog points the spotlight at another incident in this year’s round of dismissive-to-women conference remarks.

The topic for Blog Action Day this year is Climate Change. Hope all you bloggers out there will participate.

.eduGuru reviews Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture and says,

This is not a book about education or law, this is a book designed to educate.  Because of our proximity to such issues, I think it is critical that we all educate ourselves on the changes that are taking place, and the impact it is going to have on us as we move forward and try to support schools, professors, and students in their pursuit of an open learning environment.

10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines at Smashing Magazine has some excellent guidelines. This would make a good reading assignment for web design students.

The HTML5 DOM and RDFa talks about a known problem,  in a clear and interesting way.

Useful Links: CSS Backgrounds, missing Quicktime Pro?, HTML 5

Backgrounds in CSS: Everything you need to know by Michael Martin in Smashing Magazine is an excellent post and worthy of a class reading assignment if you’re teaching web development. The article includes changes to the background property coming in CSS3.

At a Webuquerque meeting on Podcasting and Vodcasting recently, speaker Vince Ascoli mentioned in passing that when Snow Leopard installs, it moves Quicktime Pro from the Applications folder into the Utilities folder. You aren’t missing Quicktime Pro, it was merely moved without explanation. That’s a #FAIL in my book.

HTML 5: The Markup Language is posted at the W3C as a working draft with several disclaimers from editor Michael ™ Smith. It’s intended to give:

Examples
The documentation for each element will eventually have at least one conformant example and at least one non-conformant example.
Details
The purpose of this subsection is to provide, where needed, additional details about the semantics of the element and its attributes.

Useful Links: Snow Leopard and AT, HTML5 and RDFa, Flash accessibility, and writing tips

Snow Leopard Assistive Technology Compatibility List is a very helpful compilation of what works and what doesn’t work on Snow Leopard. From ATMac.

There are so many posts about HTML 5 and RDFa flying around these days that it’s hard to keep up with them all. But here’s one that takes a different approach, Burningbird’s Maxwell’s Silver Hammer: RDFa and HTML5’s Microdata.

Wendy Chisholm chimes in with What I’m Watching about HTML 5.

Adobe Flash Accessiblity: Best Practices is must reading for anyone teaching or using Flash. From Erik Johnson at Six Revisions.

FatDUX has 20 tips for writing for the web that are a great lesson for beginners and a good reminder for the folks who’ve been at it a while.

Useful Links: HTML 5, CSS 3, Social Media

A Whole Lotta HTML 5 Love at STC AccessAbility is a very good set of resources.

CSS3 Quick Reference Guide. Nicely organized, by Veign.

What the F**K is Social Media: One Year Later is a truly outstanding presentation by Marta Kagan. Just in case you know anyone who still doesn’t get it. (If f**k terminology turns you against message, don’t go there.)

Useful Links: HTML 5, Banner Blindness, NFB files another suit

Bruce Lawson from Opera talks about HTML 5 at OSCON in a 43 minute video. A little history of HTML 5, an explanation of the new elements, and a makeover of Bruce’s blog with HTML 5. It’s worth your time to watch.

Bruce mentions HTML 5 Demos and Examples at the end of the talk. Thought I’d provide a link in case you don’t last all the way through the video.

Web Design Tip: Avoid Banner Blindness from Wired Pen talks about the best way to get people to see your alerts.

NFB files Section 508 complaint against Small Business Administration is another in a string of suits by the National Federation for the Blind to get web developers to wake up to accessibility. It’s a shame that we have to do this one lawsuit at a time when the information on how to do it right is available everywhere and is so old it’s practically ancient.

Useful Links: HTML 5, titles

Survivor: W3C is creative and funny and powerful and sarcastic from Burningbird.

HTML 5 is a mess. Now what? from Zeldman. A level-headed man, that Zeldman. Where’s my blue beanie? I should wear it all day today.

HTML 5 & XHTML 5: MIME is the answer from Molly reflects my own struggle with the specs.

HTML5 Tips: structural elements, Doctype and ARIA from iheni is a good review of the structural elements. No controversy, just a good resource.

To change the subject to something less contentious . . .

Your page title matters more than you think from All Access Blogging talks about titles and special characters in titles as interpreted by screen readers.

Useful Links: Open Web Tools, HTML 5 nav, CSS 3 Cheat Sheet

The Open Web Tools Directory lists the best available tools for Design, Code, Test, Debug, Deploy and Docs in a very cool HTML 5 display using the canvas element.

HTML 5: nav ambiguity resolved at zeldman.com is interesting because The Zeldman has the same problem I have with the HTML 5 specs, and also because the discussion that follows is fascinating. Don’t just read the article—read the comments, too.

CSS 3 Cheat Sheet (PDF) is another freebie from Smashing Magazine that is just begging to be used as a class handout. Match that up with the HTML 5 Cheat Sheet from SM that I mentioned a few days ago.