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Alex Jones

I lead teams at the intersection of strategy and design. Autodidact. Polymath. Barbecue acolyte. I start fires (the good kind).

Web Development

Reset Your Style

Eric Meyer has updated his reset style sheet, outlining the reasons for his change in the post Resetting Again. The modifications, while small, are logical and affirm how important the Reset sheet has become to Web professionals and amateurs alike. As Eric notes “this is more than just a throwaway development tool. It really is the beginning of a baseline style sheet. (Or can be.) Things like boldfacing and italics are some of the most obvious textual effects readers will see, and to have reset styles that treat them inconsistently across browsers doesn’t make sense.”

I use a variant of the reset style sheet in every site I build; the majority of those variants are now accounted for, making my life a bit easier. As always, Eric helps our profession move forward in a realistic way that is accessible to developers of all skill levels.

Straight Talk on Accessibility

If we can make the effort to care about cross-browser compatibility then we can make the effort to care about cross-person compatibility.

Jonathan Snook

That is one of the simplest, yet most effective points ever made about Accessibility in the realm of Web development. If you are in the least bit involved in any aspect of Web design or development, you should read What does Accessibility mean? It’s long, but well worth your time.

If you’re a believer, Jonathon provides a couple more rounds of ammunition, including a concise breakdown of the accessibility lawsuit (PDF) against Target.com. If you are unsure, or feel that accessibility isn’t important, you’ll learn a lot from his post.

This is important. I recently agreed to join the advisory board for AIR Interactive & Access U to lend my efforts to this extremely important cause. Every site on the Web should be accessible to all visitors. Yes, a balance must be struck, but right now the balance is tipped in the wrong direction. The effort to implement sites properly, ensuring everyone can access them is small.

Read the article. Think about how you work. Change what should be changed.

IE to Eliminate the Click to Activate Requirement for Flash & ActiveX

About six months back, Microsoft was forced to hobble the usability of Internet Explorer as a tactic in their legal battles with Eolas. This lead to much consternation within the Web development community and too much time and money spent implementing a JavaScript workaround that ensured that user’s aren’t forced to click every bit of Flash they encounter in order to use the functionality. Without the workaround embedded Flash apps that perform an action when the user hovers over the app do not work in Internet Explorer until the user clicks the app to “enable” it. Dumb, but not really Microsoft’s fault. While some clever quickly built a JavaScript workaround, too much time and money was wasted on something that shouldn’t have been an issue.

Well, good news has come today in the form of Microsoft’s announcement that they have licensed the “technology” required to (re)enable this functionality! Great news, though oddly enough it will take another six months to roll out!? This is a feature that was in the app, taken out against everyone’s wishes, including Microsoft, and now, when they have the go-ahead to re-add the feature they are prolonging the rollout until April of 2008. Microsoft is missing out on an opportunity to make the dev community very happy while simultaneously making the Web a better place for everyone. Here is their plan:

The first chance will be with an optional preview release, called the Internet Explorer Automatic Component Activation Preview, available in December 2007 via the Microsoft Download Center. Additionally this change will be made part of the next pre-release versions of Windows Vista SP1 and Windows XP SP3. After giving people enough time to prepare for this change, we’ll roll this behavior into the IE Cumulative Update in April 2008, and all customers who install the update will get the change.

Well, that said, this is a good thing, even if it means bad patents are being rewarded. This is yet another example as to why our patent system needs a major overhaul.

Ma.gnolia Moves Forward

The Ma.gnolia team have just announced the Ma.gnolia Developers Center, and their initial foray into OAuth support! This is a great step for anyone who is interested in building apps based on Ma.gnolia, as well as anyone who wants new and exciting ways to access and use their bookmarks.

When time allows, I will implement some changes to the Ma.gnolia Plugin for WordPress, and will definitely dig into the available APIs to see what I can do and how I should do it. If I can figure out OAuth quickly enough, it may even give me the capabilities to expand the reach and purpose of the plugin, which would be no less than stellar.

The Cost of Accessibility

Accessible, standards-compliant, quality sites should cost more than their shabbily constructed brethren. You may worry that you’ll lose business to your competition, but realize that you’re not really competing with those who produce inferior work.

Mike Cherim in his article Does Accessibility Cost More?

Mike provides a great breakdown of the importance of Accessibility from a business perspective. If you build accessibly, you are by definition better at your job as a Web professional than a person who does not. The site you provide your client is of a higher quality, which will provide them benefits beyond doing the right thing for all visitors. I won’t go into all of the details as I hope to write an article around the business benefits of accessibility some time soon, but check out the article and Mike’s blog which provide a wealth of information. Mike is a great voice in the Web Development and Accessibility world, and well worth adding to your RSS feeds.

WordPress Marketplace

Matt, the creator of WordPress, is laying the groundwork for a theme marketplace, the beginning of which he shares in his post Marketplace Idea. The idea is solid, and a step I’ve wanted to see for a while. I design and build my own themes, and will likely do so for a long time to come, but I have never built a theme to give away due to time constraints, so I’m not firmly in either target audience for the service. From this outside (though firmly in the ‘I love WordPress’ camp) vantage point I see some great benefits from this service:

  • The amount of people developing themes will increase, as professionals will be able to justify the time spent on theme creation. If billable hours are important to you, knowing that you are creating a product is worth spending some unpaid time up-front.
  • Following from the last point, the more professional developers and designers that are involved, the more high quality themes will be available.
  • Blog themes will gain in value. While I am a big fan of giving away work, having produced a couple of small plugins and scripts myself, it is important that we establish the fact that good work is worth paying for, and great work doubly so.
  • Good designs that are “retired” from a site could be put into circulation as a theme. I’ve had a couple of designs that I have replaced because I wanted something new on a site, not necessarily because the old design had any major flaws. Knowing that I could earn money, benefit others and/or gain recognition, I’d be more willing to spend some time making the small changes required to place it on the Marketplace. I’m not sure how this point relates to the requirement that the theme has not been published before.
  • This is a great promotion of open source code, without sacrificing the earnings that should come from hard work.

I’m really curious to see how the pricing will play out. Will the system set a price, or a set of prices, or will each theme producer set their own? Knowing only that a subset of users will have to pay to use your theme provides an interesting twist to setting your price and deciding on how much work to put into each theme.

I’m also excited to see how people make names for themselves, building reputations with the themes they produce. This could produce a neat cottage industry, or it could reduce the value of design and development in much the same manner as the “get a whole site for $500” services that have existed for a while. The latter doesn’t worry me very much, as quality stands out, and I know quite a few top notch folks who make their living producing great work at fair prices far above the outsourced rates.