http://www.smackthemouse.com Reviews and Articles about Webdesign: Standards, Best Practice, Accessibility, Usability, XML. en Copyright 2006, Jesper Tverskov Fri, 25 Aug 2006 05:52:28 GMT http://www.smackthemouse.com/images/jesper_1999.jpg http://www.smackthemouse.com 74 74 http://www.smackthemouse.com/footnotes http://www.smackthemouse.com/footnotes Good old footnotes are undervalued in webpages. Even serious commentary and longer articles and reports often use mediocre tooltips made with the title attribute as a poor substitute. Footnotes are much more usable and accessible. Jesper Tverskov 2006-08-25 http://www.smackthemouse.com/error404 http://www.smackthemouse.com/error404 For years we have praised the wonders of user friendly 404 error messages tailored to the website. But most often such error messages are as bad as they can be even forgetting to use the 404 status code in the HTTP header. It is high time to reconsider if the job is better left to an improved default 404 provided by web servers where it naturally belongs. Jesper Tverskov 2006-07-21 http://www.smackthemouse.com/ie7bzoom http://www.smackthemouse.com/ie7bzoom Nice that Internet Explorer is on the move again but the new PAGE ZOOM is just a deprecated magnifying glass: No line wrap, no fluid webdesign. As soon as you start zooming the dreaded horizontal scroll panel is right in your face. Jesper Tverskov 2006-06-15 http://www.smackthemouse.com/inverted http://www.smackthemouse.com/inverted It is often difficult to find the cursor when a web site is navigated using the keyboard. Where is the active link? With CSS the author of a web page can adjust how the active link is visualized. Inverted colors are the best way to highlight the active link. Jesper Tverskov 2006-05-25 http://www.smackthemouse.com/xhtmlxml http://www.smackthemouse.com/xhtmlxml In 2005 it is high time to start serving XHTML as XML on a grand scale. Others have been doing it for years. I have been doing it since Christmas. Switching between XHTML as xml and text/html is easy using the HTTP accept header. Jesper Tverskov 2005-02-21 http://www.smackthemouse.com/20041020 http://www.smackthemouse.com/20041020 CSS should not be used to present homemade XML as web pages. You end up with nothing but style. Neither man nor machine can understand the structure of your document. CSS should only be used for widely supported XML applications like XHTML. Jesper Tverskov 2004-10-20 http://www.smackthemouse.com/20040719 http://www.smackthemouse.com/20040719 It is a nice convention that a company logo also has a secondary role as a link back to the homepage. But a convention should be challenged if most users have not heard about it or don't use it, or if the concept is wrong. Jesper Tverskov 2004-07-19 http://www.smackthemouse.com/20040108 http://www.smackthemouse.com/20040108 The WCAG (1.0) guideline 4, checkpoint 4.2, about ABBR and ACRONYM, has for a long time been too unclear to implement. The drafts for XHTML 2.0 and WCAG 2.0 seem to have solved most problems. Jesper Tverskov 2004-01-08 http://www.smackthemouse.com/20031231 http://www.smackthemouse.com/20031231 One of the great advantages of using first letter of the link text as access key is that it can be generated by code. Conventional wisdom states that it should be done server-side. Bad that it is much easier with JavaScript. Jesper Tverskov 2003-12-31 http://www.smackthemouse.com/20031007 http://www.smackthemouse.com/20031007 It is now possible to make flexible layout with user-friendly short lines that adapt to screen resolution, to width of browser window, and to font-size chosen by the user. This could be a new beginning for more accessible and usable web pages. Jesper Tverskov 2003-10-07 http://www.smackthemouse.com/20030831 http://www.smackthemouse.com/20030831 A web site should never force new windows on users. If it is necessary as exception to the rule, target="_blank" is the method to use. JavaScript's window.open does not send information about the referrer in IE. Jesper Tverskov 2003-08-31 http://www.smackthemouse.com/20021031 http://www.smackthemouse.com/20021031 The traditional way of implementing the HTML accesskey attribute using unique letters does not work. I propose always to use the first letter of the link name as access key. The first letter can be generated by code. We badly need are more accessible Internet. Jesper Tverskov 2002-10-31 http://www.smackthemouse.com/20020427 http://www.smackthemouse.com/20020427 The event driven programming model in ASP.NET made possible by HTML and WEB controls "runat server" is a great idea but not without problems. It is a usability disaster that the use of ENTER in forms no longer works as expected. Jesper Tverskov 2002-04-27