It seems that Roger's are taking over the world...
First there is Roger Johansson's excellent article on Accessible tables - Bring on the Tables.
Then there is Roger Hudson's Accessible forms, PDF and Accessibility and Flash and Accessibility.
Starting last week, I have a rather long response to this written. After managing to write about a quarter of what I wanted to say, I realised it was already too long for a single post. So, I decided to make a series of smaller posts on it. Well, let's start with the first one...
For those who may be interested, A quick and dirty introduction to accessibility from a presentation last night to the Melbourne branch of the Web Standards Group.
For a long time, I've been frustrated that there has been no good way of semantically marking up JavaScript in XML, for code samples and walking somebody through a script in tutorials or articles. So, in June this year I started a project to create a DTD and XML namespace for marking up JavaScript as XML. I've worked strictly from ECMA-262 3ed, and have just now finished it to the point that the entire token tree is representable. However, there are many aspects of it that need some consideration and there are design and extensibility concerns that must be taken into account.
Frankly, I don't think I as a sole developer will be able to finish this, nor be able to make the best decisions for this project. So, I'm here opening up for discussion the idea of making this a community project. Anyone interested in helping with development, organsation and/or management of this XML application, please chime in here. Also if you know of a similar project please tell me, as I don't want to be doing any duplicate work I can avoid.
Looking for your favourite JavaScript documentation? Try Google cache or the wayback machine. Netscape DevEdge is currently gone from the web. I've not been able to find any information about it, but you can always have a look at what Mitchell of the Mozilla Foundation has managed to achieve in respect of licencing and maintaining the content from DevEdge.
Like lots of folks, I've been intrigued by 3D graphics generation for years, but never actually tried it out myself. It's an imposing prospect, the applications 3D artists use seem massively complex, and there are many concepts to wrap one's head around. So just out of needless curiosity I thought I'd see about getting setup to try out a little 3D stuff. My first step is to ask my friend Alex for some beginner's tips on what applications to try. His response was in-depth and definitely worth a read if you're interested in the subject.
If you are just looking to learn, you can get the Cinema4d demo, there is Maya PLE (personal learning edition), and Softimage XSI has a demo too. All of them are crippled by not allowing saves, or watermarking the renders (XSI has no limitations, but the demo is time-limited I think Win and Linux only no mac version). There are also free modeler/renderers. There is Blender, and Wings 3D. Blender is open source Wings3D is freeware and both are cross-platform. There is also Animation Master by Hash Inc. It is a patch modeler used mostly for character animation. Cinema4d, Maya, and XSI all have varying levels of price-point based on the modules and or packages you buy. If you plan to branch out and use your skills to make money off knowledge of software Maya or XSI are the answer. If you want Flash 3D, Swift3D is one of the best vector 3D tools. Last but not least Strata3d. Strata is OK from what I remember but seems to fall a bit behind every other package. I recommend getting demos of the software mentioned and playing with them.
For learning Maya PLE is free and has tons of resources that are free and pay. If you want a powerhouse player in the industry, you can buy the basic version of XSI and it comes with fantastic DVD training for around $500.
I use Cinema4D. It is basically like Lightwave 3D. I do not recommend Lightwave because it has a horrible steep learning curve.
For what I use 3D for I would look in this order: XSI, Maya, 3D Studio Max, Cinema4D. There are many more out there...
Be prepared to need a fast processor, maxed out RAM, and a fast hard drive.
Update 2: This new section now re-titled "Link Blog"
Update: Matt from Squarewithin writes with a correction. Apparently the primary social function (see who else linked to something) can be added with a minor modification to his script. Matt writes
"If you just want to see who else has posted the same url, its not hard to add that feature to the script. Basically, when creating the entry, just add the line:
$entry->excerpt ( \'http://del.icio.us/\' . $posts->find(\'@hash\') );
And then use theMTEntryExcerpttag to show the link to that url."
I just added a new section to this website, for lack of a simpler name I'm calling it just "links". You should see it in the main navigation, or you can get to it at http://web-graphics.com/links/. After listening to helpful reader feedback, I took the general consensus advice and made a separate area for these "quick-links", "sideblog", or however else you'd like to refer to these non or lightly annotated list of outside links.
This section is not tied into the main weblog here, instead it's fed from http://del.icio.us, which is called "a social bookmarking service". Del.icio.us is difficult to fully describe, but it's a powerful tool for saving and organizing links that you find interesting. There is much more to it, set up a free account and try it out. The new links section is fed from delicious by way of a this Perl script from squarewithin. I chose this particular script rather than the ones listed on this page, and rather than a new (beta) xml-rpc function within del.icio.us itself because this script actually makes a new post for each link, and uses the MovableType category system, adding new categories automatically as needed. Coupled with a rebuild script, I can transfer links quickly via terminal, and eventually I'll automate the updates. This script lets me essentially make a back-up of all the links I post to my del.icio.us account.
The social features of del.icio.us don't get transfered, so if you'd like to access these links within the del.icio.us enviornment, here is where you can get to it: http://del.icio.us/wg. More tweaking will happen to this section, I'd also like to fold back in the blogroll somewhere, but anyways, thats the start of it. Please feel free to comment or contact with improvement suggestions - they are always welcome.
Yet another company preparing to step into the growing club of CSS powered high volume sites, Yahoo! has a CSS driven beta up for previewing and giving feedback on.
The site is so far seriously lacking in semantic coding, and has some accessibility problems, but it's at least in design and layout a slight improvement on the old design. Also, at this time it seems neither Safari nor Opera are supported.
Big Sigh of Relief: Ahhhh... Ars Technica redesigned using XHTML/CSS with some nifty widgets to toggle font size and color scheme. Readers can toggle back to the old color palette, should you choose, but I'm going to stick to the new look so I don't have to highlight everything on the screen in order to read it. Ken Fisher and Aurich Lawson, Designer of Ars Technica on the redesign:
Though we offer an alternate dark version, the most obvious change is the new default color scheme. I know, I loved 1998 too.
Amen!
Learn the details on the redesign, if you so desire. Or just take another deep breath with me, joyful that you can once again read Ars Technica. Here we go. Deep Breath. Exhale. Ahhhhh!
Mike Davidson has a release candidate for "Scalable Inman Flash Replacement", otherwise known as sIFR. This is a pretty exciting method for replacing headline fonts with, well, just about any font in your type collection. Feast your eyes on the example. Designers everywhere are celebrating with pink cans of Sofia Blanc de Blanc.
Andy Clarke has just launched the Disney Store UK, which is web-standards based and accessible. A fine accomplishment!
Each day this week, he promises to look at the elements that went into the making of the store - starting with Anatomy of a mouse (day 1).
Long time since I last did a browser release post. Well, here it is: A security hole in Mozilla Firefox has been fixed by the 0.10.1 release. Users of the 1.0 preview release can download an XPI patch for it, other users will have to download the new 0.10.1 release. This hole does not affect other Mozilla products. More information at Important Security Update for Firefox Available
As a side note, it can be noted that you need to authorise the download of the XPI if you try to download it from that page, since Mozilla apparently does by default not allow installing XPIs from the www.mozilla.org domain.