I ordered it even before it came out, but as I just got stuck in writing a part of my own chapter in an upcoming book, I finally opened Stuart Langridges DHTML Utopia: Modern Web Design Using JavaScript & DOM published by Sitepoint. (more…)
A lot of email noise is being created on mailing lists and forums plainly because new developers are not sure about where what web technology ends and where the other begins. “Can I style the Icon of the page via CSS?”, “How do I send a form via HTML” or “Can I check in JavaScript if a folder has network sharing enabled” are just some recent examples. (more…)
Last month was also the first one to break the 1 million hits barrier on the whole server (blog, icant.co.uk and onlinetools.org.
Again, a huge thank you to NWU for sponsoring my server space. This would cost me a bundle :-)
I toyed with the idea of getting myself a Mac for a longer time now, mainly because I want to be able to check my works on this OS and Safari more easily than now. I put some money aside, and now my landlady tells me I need to move out as she wants to sell the house I rent my flat in. Bummer, so it will have to wait a bit more, unless there is someone to sponsor me with nice mini mac out there? UK based company in exchange for some free advertising here and an accessibility consulation of your web presence? (One can dream, right?)
Now, I looked at the Mac Minis, and some 19” TFT so far. The issue I got with the Mini Mac is that I don’t really see the point of spending and extra 55 quid on a wireless card when USB dongles are about 15 quid. Has anyone experience with USB dongles and mini macs? Am I looking for trouble if I want to save these 40 pound?
We have faced quite a dilemma today and had a 4 hour meeting about possibilities how to solve it. The client has a huge sitemap, and they are bound by law to offer all of the services listed in it on their site as links.
Now, up to two levels, a navigation on the left hand side is bearable, but when it comes to three levels with up to 30 links each, even the highest resolution will have the current link below the proverbial fold.
We tackled a lot of that by using something I christened “Contextual navigation order (CNO)”, meaning the current section will always be the first in the navigation, which is good for visual users and screen readers, as neither need to go past the other links to reach where they want to go. An example of CNO is on the easynav demo page and on the North Yorkshire Council web site. North Yorks solved the third level by moving it to the right of the screen, but in this case that space is reserved for marketing.
As cutting down on links is not an option – although it would be more usable – we needed a solution that shows the third level. As the client was not sure if their development team can put parts of the navigation somewhere else on the screen – the easiest option in the CMS (Tridion) is to loop through all folders once and generate one navigation – we wondered if there is a CSS/JS solution which still remains accessible.
A first draft of my attempts can be found here:
Maybe you will have to face the same problem, or you have another option?
Personally, I don’t see much sense in displaying that many links at once, and as a visitor I’d use the A to Z or the search instead.