Why, Blog, Why?

Here's a link for all my developer friends:

HTML 5 is still being drafted, but here is an early list of differences from the current HTML 4 spec. There is some very interesting stuff being proposed for this version. One thing that caught my attention early on is that the specification won't be considered complete until there are at least 2 complete implementations of the draft - something very different from previous versions. Also, the input element will have a lot more choices for the type attribute available, such as date pickers and true combo boxes. It will be interesting to follow this through the draft process. And the specification will have two sets of guidelines - one for web developers/content writers and another for browser/user agent developers. (One reason why <font> is not dead in HTML 5 )

http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/~checkout~/html5/html4-differences/Overview.html

In related news, the W3C is calling on all web professionals to participate in the HTML 5 discussion.

I was burned by the document.getElementById() may return incorrect element in IE and Opera bug again today. This time though it was particularly bothersome as I spent the better part of the afternoon trying to figure out why I couldn't access the length property of the value of a textarea element in IE when the same code worked fine in Firefox. I mean, getting the length of a value of any form element through JavaScript usually isn't like rocket science.

<textarea id="description" name="description">Here is some text</textarea> <script type="text/javascript"> var myElement = document.getElementById('description'); alert(myElement.value.length); //alert: 17 </script>

Every time I tried to execute that code in IE it would complain that 'value.length' is null or not an object. After a whole crap load of debugging I finally tracked it down to the fact that IE was actually referencing the <meta name="description"> tag in the head section of the page. Yeah, see even though the function is getElementById, IE still thought I meant the element with the name attribute equal to "description". Or as my brother put it in a comment to the original post (before the comments were wiped in the great Data Loss of '06), maybe IE thought I was calling the getJustAboutAnythingIFeelLike() function... Damn you IE for making me have to change my ID attributes to suite your leisurely implementation of the DOM!

In a recent post, Bruce Lawson, a member of the Accessibility Task Force and notable funny-guy, gives the following pointers on accessibility:

• Accessibility is not text-only or a separate “cripples-only” site
• Disability is more than blindness
• Accessibility is not an exercise in political correctness; there are demonstrable, measurable advantages in usability for all
• Accessibility isn’t a purely technical matter; it’s to do with content as well (and is thus also the reponsibility of the non-techy people in the organisation who produce content).

He also points out Legal & General as an example of a corporate web site that is both fashionable and accessible.

In a wonderful display of irony, Bruce’s contribution to the CSS Zen Garden project (a project revolving around beautiful, usable and accessible web site design) had me laughing out loud with a call back to Geocities personal home pages circa 1996. In this case, ugly is only skin deep :)

I came across a sort of mini-novel/case study today called Client vs. Developer Wars. In it, the author narrates the story of Brian, a project manager at a fictitious company called Electron Cowboys, and his experience with a client that hired them to build a website. The story details one of the classic problems in web development - getting the client to tell you what they want and giving the client what they really mean. I’ve been in situations just like this where a client will only give you a general idea of what they are looking for using buzz words like “cutting edge”, “sexy” , “hip” and “cool”. These terms are mostly used to describe the design or the look-and-feel of a website rather then the content (I think most clients focus on style over substance) , and it’s because of this that the design process is the longest part of the development process. After all, the words “sexy” and “hip” are relative terms that can be interpreted differently by each and every person. What one designer thinks is sexy may just look like a complete mess to another. So, if a client can’t tell you with absolute certainty what they are looking for, how can a designer ever be expected to nail a design on the first try? The truth is that they can’t, and if a client could tell you exactly what they wanted then they probably could have just done the design themselves and saved time, money and many, many headaches on both sides of the hallway.

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