Q: I have a Table of Contents at the beginning of a page that is linked to anchors around the headlines of all the content sections. When I click them with a mouse there is no problem – I get sent to the heading, read the paragraph and click the “back to top� link to go to the TOC. However, as I need to be accessible with this project I realised that when I use the keyboard and tab from link to link and hit enter I get sent to the section, but hitting tab doesn’t get me to the first link in this section but to the next item in the TOC! What am I doing wrong?

A: You are not doing anything wrong – Internet Explorer is (I assume this is what you are using). Internet Explorer has a really bizarre bug – it scrolls the page to a named anchor but fails to move the keyboard focus.

The fix for the problem has to do with IE’s hasLayout property. This property is set to true whenever an element has a defined height or width, is floated or has some other IE-only properties like zoom set. One solution to make IE move the keyboard focus is to contain the link in an element that has a hasLayout property of true, like a DIV with defined measurements.

This bug has been undiscovered for a long time as table cells by default have a hasLayout of true in IE and therefore the problem never occurred in table based layouts.

Another solution to the problem is to give the link a predefined tabindex property. If you don’t know how many links there are or you need tabindex for other reasons, you can use a tabindex of -1, which is not valid in HTML, but does the trick.

You can read more about this problem and the solutions in more detail over at Gez Lemon’s Juicy Studio :

[tags]netmag,webdevtrick,qanda,internet explorer,keyboard,accessibility[/tags]

I am right now burning 30 CDs (8/30 verifying right now) for my workshop on DOM scripting in Singapore in two days.

The flight is in 20 hours and will last 13 hours. I then have a day to recover until the 8 powerpoints with code examples and exercises for each will be shown to about 25 subscribers to the course. The really scary thing is that I have no idea what hotel I am in, but the organizer of the workshop promised to pick me up from the airport (that would be a first, I’ve never been picked up before!).

I will be back in London on Sunday morning and will leave again on Wednesday for the Highland Fling and will stay in Edinburgh until Sunday, most likely sharing a flat with Andy Budd.

Seeing that I normally only sleep 5-6 hours and write most of the time on the laptop, I really start to wonder why I pay for such a nice flat :)

I had this problem the other day that I needed to know how many nesting levels a menu has. After some failed attempts of walking the DOM and lots of comparisons I realised that it is actually a lot easier than I thought:

function treedepth(o){
var nested = o.getElementsByTagName('ul');
var allcount = 0;
for(var i=0,j=nested.length;i<;i++){
var count = 1;
var kid = nested[i].getElementsByTagName('ul')[0];
while(kid!==undefined){
count++;
kid = kid.getElementsByTagName('ul')[0];
}
if(count>allcount){allcount=count;}
}
return allcount;
}

You can check a testcase for treedepth here.

Any better way to do this?

[tags]JavaScript,DOM,nodetree,list,htmllist,depth,code,webdevtrick[/tags]

I am rubbish with maps. I get car sick when I read them, I have no clue when I look at them and try to predict where I will find things and explanations from me normally sound something like “Take a left at the shop with the fruit, then walk until you see a blue skip, take a right there until you go past a betting shop….” meaning I just don’t remember street names.

I am even worse folding and unfolding maps. You can bet that sooner or later I won’t be able to fold a massive map any longer and that you hear a ripping noise when I open one. That aside, it is a real pain in London to read a map anyways as you hardly ever have enough personal space to unfold one in the first place.

A friend of mine now showed me an invention she came up some time ago, which is a foldable and zoomable map. You just pick the section you are interested in and you can unfold with two fingers to go to a detail map or just keep the overview in your hand. Together with information about the tube and different sights in London this would be a very cool gift for people visiting me and klutzes like myself. A shame you cannot buy them yet.

See a video of the map in action on youtube:

[tags]maps,map,zooming,handy,guide,tourist,london,pocketmap[/tags]

Ok, this is a rant:

What is the deal with people asking me about commercial use of my scripts, getting an answer and not even bothering answering any longer?

I have published scripts for use and study for about 9 years now and every once in a while I get a comment or email following the certain pattern:

“Hey Chris, I really love your script xyz, it is exactly what I need and what I was looking for. Thanks so much for making this available. You rock! You mention on the site and in the script that you want to be notified about commercial use. I’d like to use yous script, what are the terms?”

Now, my stance is the following:

Go nuts using and learning from my stuff, but when you make some money, I’d like to see a share, at least as a sign of respect for offering the stuff for free in the first place. If you create a web site or a intranet I normally ask for a one-off payment that does cover a coffee and sandwich and a brownie in a London cafe. If you sell a product like a CMS I normally ask for a higher share or a royalty for every copy sold (the latter never happened). If your product is free, I don’t want anything (horde for example uses some of my code). I remember about 5 years ago, people downloaded the free scripts and really spend $5 on a donation for it, but that has ceased to happen.

Normally I spend about 5 minutes drafting a personal email to the enquirer explaining this and lo and behold about 9 out of 10 emails never ever get an answer. Sometimes even the enquirer email is invalid! This is a waste of my precious time and I am just totally sick of it.

So what do people expect? Shall I just stop releasing anything for free, create a cool web site with fake product packages and asking for $250 for a 20 line JavaScript? This seems to work for a lot of others, I really do get the feeling that people want to be taken advantage of.

So by all means, ask for commercial use of my stuff, but also answer me if I write you. Even if it is a “xx dollars! Fornicate you, I get it cheaper at xyz!” at least tell me what is going on!

[tags]frustration,online sales,scripts,free,communication,negotiation[/tags]