Scarf*oo

Roughly a month after the proposed recommendation status, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 have reached the final stage and it’s ready to be adopted.

Ever happened to you that after applying one of the many solutions for fixing IE’s png background image support, links on that element didn’t work? How about repeating background images? I bet most of you will nod in agreement. Well, Drew Diller from dillerdesign.com‘s got the solution for you. While his script fails to apply PNGs to the body element and to an img tag (for now), it solves the problem with background-position and background-repeat.

All you have to do is call the following script and voila, your headaches are over:

<!--[if IE 6]>
<script src="DD_belatedPNG.js"></script>
<script>
    DD_belatedPNG.fix('.png_bg'); //EXAMPLE
</script>
<![endif]-->

Head over to the DD_belatedPNG page for downloads and more examples.

On one hand you have a carefully written fast web site and on the other one, well, you have another carefully written web site that isn’t quite as performant – but why is it so?

The answer doesn’t lie in your web site’s size, but in the number of elements on your site, and consequentially the number of requests to the server to fetch those elements. Surely, you should always be careful to cut down image size, choose the appropriate image format, produce clean and nice (x)html and couple it with CSS, but as experienced web developers we already know that, right? Right?
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Here we have been blessed with the green light to step up from WCAG 1 to the latest and greatest WCAG 2. You can read more about the topic by following the links below:

• Overview of WCAG 2.0 Documents
• How to Meet WCAG 2.0 (Customisable quick reference)
• Transitioning from WCAG 1.0 to WCAG 2.0
• Accessible Forms using WCAG 2.0

This issue is all about the standards we love (or hate). Molly E. Holzschlag tells us how the standards movement is splitting and going separate ways and opens a can-o-worms for us to discuss upon. The second article written by Scott Jehl is all about testing the target browser capabilities before delivering specific enhancements to the web. An interesting read, although who will bother implementing it is a completely different story.

Over at ALA, Dave Shea branded a new technique called CSS Sprites2, which is basically a combination of our beloved CSS sprites technique turbocharged with the famous jQuery javascript library we all learned to love (or hate). You can find the lengthy tutorial over here.

What can you expect following last year’s, 37 questions sized A List Apart Web Design Survey? This year’s survey, or course. Named differently, yet pretty much the same lenghty, snore-inducing, honey-please-make-me-coffee 18 page survey. No game to watch on TV tonight? You know, you want it.

An slick new 50$ mac application from Clearleft for web site usability testing. Seems like a well designed app that could really come in handy. See for yourself.

Silverback screencast from Jeremy Keith on Vimeo.

Oh, and just in case you are holding back on the purchase, 10% of all profits go to save the gorillas!

Opera software released 21 tutorials on web development targeted for the masses. All in all it seems to be a well-rounded collection covering the basics, so if you are into more advanced stuff, you may find the stuff covered oh-not-so-tasty.

From the Opera site:

“Learning Web Standards just got easier. Opera’s new Web Standards Curriculum is a complete course to teach you standards-based web development, including HTML, CSS, design principles and background theory, and JavaScript basics. It already has support from many organizations (including Yahoo! and the Web Standards Project) and universities. The first 23 articles are currently available, with about 30 more to be published between now and late September.”

Jump to the first article in the series if you are still interested.

The People at RNIB have released the Surf Right Toolbar, which is — you guessed it — a toolbar for IE, which is designed to bring to the surface the often hidden accessibilty settings, such as turning javascript and images on/off, changing text size and so on.

Quoting:
“The Surf Right Toolbar is really for anyone who wants to adjust the way they view content on the web to make it easier to read. This could include people with mild disabilities, the elderly, people with reading problems, cognitive problems, using dial-up, photosensitivity and so on.”

You can grab the beta, right here.