Web Standards, Accessibility and Other Stuff

I was very pleasantly surprised to learn that Web Axe, my podcast and blog on web accessibility, has been nominated for .net magazine’s 2008 Best of the Web awards. It’s in the “Podcast of the Year” category, the sixth category down the list. After voting narrows the candidates to three (voting ends October 13), a panel of judges decides on the winners who will be announced in December.

If you listen to Web Axe and like it (or even if you don’t!), you can vote for Web Axe on the Best of the Web site.

Here’s a quote from .net magazine about the contest:

The .net Awards celebrate the best in web design and development. The 14 categories for 2008 range from Design Agency of the Year and Podcast of the Year through to the Infamy Award – a chance to name and shame those ruining your web experience.

I attended the An Event Apart conference in San Francisco (AEASF08) this week, a pretty well known conference “for people who make web sites”, mostly designers and developers. I had the pleasure of speaking to Eric Myer and Derek Featherstone which was way cool. I took the Caltrain from Sunnyvale on the first day and drove all the way up from Cupertino on the second day (found early-bird parking for only $10!). There’s a nice Flickr AEASF08 album which has pictures of people, venue (The Palace Hotel), and the delicious food.

Here are some tidbits from the conference:

• Empathy for the user is what a designer needs most.
• The average headings sizes from nine CSS frameworks from H1 to H6 were (in em): 2.33, 1.8, 1.45, 1.25 1.11, 1.05
• Use visual weight (through size, color, texture, etc) to create a hierarchy of elements on a web page which creates meaning for the user.
• Modern web design (like jazz music) is about creating frameworks where users (musicians) can improvise and participate.
• Pixel/em value make more sense when using the 62.5% method (body font size).
• “Progressive disclosure” is a new term which refers to progressive enhancement used with hiding/showing content.
• Eric Myer discusses debugging in CSS and his CSS reset file.
• Web accessibility checklists are only a starting point.
• Google was lazy in not making Google Map controls keyboard accessible.
• “Math is easy; design is hard.”

So I was getting directions the other day on Google Maps, and noticed that the Street View is now available in my neighborhood. If the street address of my rental house is entered (”18750″), my neighbors home is actually shown. I had to modify the address just a bit (to “18740″) to get a better shot of my home.

At first, it’s a little scary knowing that your home is now plotted on Google Maps, but I’m down with it. I’m just glad you can’t read the license plate numbers…

If AT&T wants me to switch my cable services, AT&T’s web site should support my browser (Firefox 3)! They want me to use crappy IE. Last I checked browser usage, IE is down to around 55%, so that’s a lot of non-IE users they’re deterring. Please AT&T, implement web accessibility practices and use web standards! The customer must be able to use whatever web browser he chooses.

I thought it would be interesting to post some statistical information from Feedburner on my podcast and blog about web accessibility, Web Axe. It had been several weeks since I last checked the stats, and it was a pleasant surprise to see some growth.

The stats are for Thursday, July 10, 2008 and shows one of Web Axe’s highest subscriber rates of 746 (an approximation of how many times your feed has been requested in a 24-hour period). What I find most interesting is the different types of feed readers being used and how popular they are.  Google and iTunes top the list. Google feed readers (Google Reader or iGoogle) count for 32%, and iTunes for 30% (17% Mac and 13% Windows). Netvibes, my favorite RSS reader, was next at 10%.

With so many developers using Firebug add-on with the Firefox web browser, I was really surprised that it didn’t work when I upgraded to Firefox 3. Firefox 3 was June 17, 2008, and you’ll notice that the  Firebug update wasn’t until June 28. That means that for eleven days, we web developers were left bewildered, without the now essential web developing tool. Of course, I’m guessing most of us had another computer with Firefox 2 and Firebug still running as I did.

So now, if you’re still wondering, you can get Firebug 1.2 that works beautifully with Firefox 3.

Firefox 2 users should install the older 1.05 version of Firebug. You can get the previous Firebug versions here.

You probably don’t remember O.D. Mag, and I doubt you know of Screenplaze or U of M Dentists.com. But you may want to become familiar with my latest personal project, TimeTracker. It’s a standards-compliant, accessible web application, even with some “web 2.0″ jazz sprinkled in. It’s written out of need of a friend who’s a music therapist, but may be used in many other fields and professions. Here’s a description from the site:

TimeTracker is a web-based application designed to track and report sessions between professionals and their clients. TimeTracker is designed for social workers and psychologists, but can also be used by countless other professions including counselors, teachers, consultants, and physical therapists.

I eventually hope to sell this application, but contact me if you’d like the info for a free trial account.