84 posts tagged “mark-pilgrim”
2002
RSS2 modules
It seems RSS 2.0 has the capability to support modules (I was under the false impression that this ability was restricted to RDF modules in the rival RSS 1.0 specification). Following a post by Mark Pilgrim on B-linking (the blogging equivalent of a B-movie) Dave Winer has released a draft of blogChannel, the first ever RSS 2.0 module.
Mark blogs RSS
There’s enough RSS discussion floating about right now to make one’s head spin. Thank Goodness then for Mark Pilgrim, who yesterday posted an excellent explanation of RSS 2.0, and today followed it up with both a hugely informative History of the RSS Fork and a concise summary of the cases for deprecating some of the existing RSS 0.94 elements in the upgrade to RSS 2.0, which seems to be one of the biggest talking points in the RSS community at the moment. I can’t say I’ve quite figured RSS out yet but thanks to Mark’s tireless commentary I fell a lot more informed than I was yesterday morning.
Python RSS locator
Mark Pilgrim has written an ultra-liberal RSS locator (in Python, naturally). I guess he had to scratch an itch. The amount of work it puts in to locating an RSS feed for a site is astonishing, especially when you consider how short the actual code is.
Back to normal at diveintomark
Mark Pilgrim has made his first update since finishing his accessibility series a week ago. He has launched a new site design (as previewed on css-discuss) in an attractive shade of blue, and posted a catch up of the many events that took place over the weeks that his blog was devoted to accessibility. My favourite quote:
[... 89 words]Dive into accessibility
Mark Pilgrim’s accessibility series has come to an end, and he has compiled the whole lot in to a fantastic new resource: Dive Into Accessibility. This is going to be required reading for anyone with a conscience and a weblog (or any other kind of site) for years to come. I’ve fallen a bit behind on implementing Mark’s accessibility tips but I am set on using them on this site soon (probably along with the new design) and applying them to any sites I develop in the future. Thanks Mark.
Fun with Amazon
There’s plenty of activity surrounding Amazon web services today. My limited demo barely scratches the surface of the possibilities—people are already experimenting with Amazon’s similarity search and Mark Pilgrim has released PyAmazon, a Python wrapper for the Amazon API. I’ve started listing alternative implementations on the PHP Amazon Search page, and I’ll be sure to blog the more innovative examples as and when I find them.
Accessible headers
Mark’s latest accessibility tip concerns header tags (<h1> through <h6>). Mark explains that using headers in the right order helps screen readers to interpret the structure of your pages, and shows how to use CSS to effectively style headers. Mark once again demonstrates the comment hack as a way of bringing Netscape 4 in line with other browsers, a technique that has been criticised by the More Like This Weblog as unnecessary encouragement for NS4 users. Incidentally, Johannes Koch has an excellent summary of CSS hiding techniques.
Accessible fonts
Mark has out-done himself today with his long awaited coverage of relative font sizes. This is a notoriously tough topic (thanks to a whole bunch of strange CSS bugs and browser differences) but Mark carefully and comprehensively explains the various work arounds and CSS hacks needed to get the right effect with maximum accessibility.
Jonathan on longdesc
Jonathan has insider knowledge that Mark will not be covering the longdesc attribute in his accessibility series. This it not because longdesc is not a useful accessibility tool, but simply because it does not fit the “fire and forget” nature of Mark’s series. Jonathan’s post discusses longdesc and the difficulties involved in adequately describing an image.
Image map accessibility
Mark Pilgrim continues to educate with day 24 of his series. Client side image maps need not pose a barrier to accessibility thanks to the helpful way in which alternative browsers use the alt attribute. They still aren’t much use for people using a normal (non-lynx) browser with images turned off though, and server side image maps are a big no.
Alt all the way
Mark says that today is the most important day of his whole accessibility series, and who are we to argue? The topic is the alt attribute for images, and the message is simple: Every image should have one, even if the image is there purely as layout decoration (in which case an empty attribute should be used). Surprisingly Mark does not give advice on chosing text for the attribute but he does provide an excellent further reading list, which includes Hixie’s superb Mini FAQ About The Alternate Text Of Images.
Final table tip
A final table tip from Mark: Providing a summary for tables. Mark explains the summary attribute which should be attached to every <table> tag to summarise the purpose of the table. Tables used for layout should include an empty summary attribute to show they are layout tables (in a similar way to empty alt tags for layout images). The summary attribute is only used by text to speech browsers, so I’m slightly confused as to why it should be included for layout tables—surely if the attribute is empty a speech browser will skip tstraight over it as if it wasn’t there?
Accessible tables
Mark has been educating us on the accessible way of marking up tables, with particular reference to calendar tables on blogs. My blog doesn’t have a calendar (yet, I’m considering adding one) but Mark’s articles have brought up some interesting things that I was previously unaware of. Giving your calendar a real caption explains the <caption> tag, which can provide a useful (and easily styled) caption for any table. Using real table headers explains how <th> tags are interpreted by speech browsers and shows how they can be used in conjunction with the abbr attribute to create more accessible table columns.
More tips from Mark
Time to catch up on Mark Pilgrim’s accessibility tips. Four have been added since I last checked, so I’ll go through them in turn.
Additional navigational links
Today’s accessibility tip: Providing additional navigation aids. Mark explains the concept of “relative” links using the <link> tag, which can be used to provide shortcuts to the next and previous page in a sequence as well as links to a site’s homepage. He also provides instructions for implementing them in Moveable Type, and asks for suggestions as to how it could be done in Radio. These links are not rendered in the actual body of a page but can be used by many browsers to provide additional navigation aids. My blog has these already but only as shortcuts to my categories and a link back to the home page—I haven’t yet implemented them for next/previous buttons while browsing the archives (which is arguably their most useful ability). Time to get hacking...
Day 8: page titles
Day 8: Constructing meaningful page titles—the accessibility tips are flying thick and fast now. I’ve always been conscientious of my page titles (after all, they’re all you get when when you use your browser’s history feature) but it seems I was not quite conscientious enough. My titles now all carry a reference to the name of the blog in addition to a description of the page.
Language tag
Mark Pilgrim’s accessiblity series continues: Day 7: Identifying your language. Since I’m using XHTML 1.0 I’ve changed my opening <html> tag to the following:
[... 55 words]Mark replies
Mark mailed me in response to my query about limiting his accessibility series to weblogs rather than expanding it to cover general sites:
[... 176 words]Day 6: Doctypes
Mark Pilgrim starts his series of weblog accessibility tips today with tutorial on adding a doctype to a blog.
Jonathan on Mark
Jonathan has meta-blogged (I think that’s the term) responses to Mark Pilgrim’s accessiblity series. He replies to my query about the wisdom of limiting the series to bloggers rather than expanding it to cover as much as possible:
[... 166 words]Mark explains all
Over at diveintomark Mark Pilgrim has explained the aims of his Accessibility series:
[... 208 words]Day 4: Lillian
Mark Pilgrim’s set of case studies is beginning to shape together. I’ve been following responses to it through his “Further reading on today’s posts” referral tracking tool—reception has been overwhelmingly positive, with almost universal praise for Mark’s decision to use the case study format to drive home his point. kcalder criticised Mark’s suggestion that colour blind users wouldn’t get much out of
images on the web, and Mark has apologised and altered the case study accordingly. SubAverage called Mark “preachy” and posted a parody (mentioned in passing by Dave Winer). All this and we’re only on day 4.
Day 3: Bill
Day 3: Bill—Mark Pilgrim’s “30 days to a more accessible weblog” series continues with the story of Bill, a retired military officer with a physical disability who surfs the web on an old Linux laptop and runs a mailing list on Veteran’s rights. The piece also clarifies that the characters profiled are fictional (call me naive but I wasn’t sure if they were based on real people or not). I can’t wait to see where Mark is going with this—3 days in and he has already built up some beautifully observed case studies and it will be fascinating to see what he does with them. I’m also intrigued as to how he can make his blog any more accessible—his current accessibility statement demonstrates a far higher level of understanding than any other site I’ve yet seen on the web.