Stu Nicholls CSS menus site

Posted on 3 Jun 2009 at 1:30pm

In January, Stu Nicholls created a new site specifically for various types of CSS menus and CSS drop down menus. He has decided to take all the good bits about menus from his previous CSS Play website (www.cssplay.co.uk) and created a site called CSS Menus (www.cssmenus.co.uk).

It\'s a great site. Have a look if you\'re interested in CSS based navigation techniques. To get the best out of his site, click on the type of nav you\'re looking to create and choose the type of menu you\'re looking for and then select from the available styles. It\'s a great source of inspiration.

If you do use his ideas etc, please support Stu by donating a small amount via his PayPal donate buttons.

If you use his code directly, for personal use a support donation is requested though not compulsory and the copyright comment must be retained in the stylesheet.

For commercial use or on paying jobs a support donation is required and the copyright comment must be kept in the stylesheet.

The Screen Reader Experience

Posted on 21 May 2009 at 7:04pm

A couple of people on my course today seemed a little intimidated by the demonstration I did of the Windows Eyes and Thunder screen readers. I did have one or two technical issues running on my laptop, as it was not configured in exactly the same way as I usually have it on my desktop, but it was enough to give people an idea about what was involved.

Basically, I would like to reiterate the point that working and testing with a screen reader does take a lot of getting used to, but if you put the initial effort in, it will become a lot easier with a little experience. This will greatly help you to understand the workflow of a user that works with a screen reader and ultimately help you create more accessible websites.

The free screen reader that I demonstrated was called Thunder and is available as a download for unlimited use with WebbIE (text based browser - download link to Thunder). The other screen reader that I demonstrated was Windows Eyes from GWMicro (download link to Windows Eyes).

As a point of interest, here are a couple of links to demonstrations of screen readers by sighted and unsighted users. Some are very interesting...

1. JAWS reading headings at the speed of an average screen reader user...
2. Accessing the web using JAWS screen reading software
3. YouTube is inaccessible to screen reader users
4. Demonstration of Thunder Screen Reader by users
5. Victor Tsaran: "An Introduction to Screen Readers"

Informal No 9 – Save Yourself an SEO Headache

Posted on 12 Sep 2008 at 3:34pm

Now that the summer is over and we've all hopefully had a good break away from the grindstone, it's time to refocus and get business back on track. I'm really excited to announce the next Axis Informal as it's going to be a real corker of an evening. We've got tips and insight from the SEO industry in the form of Gavin Walker and we'll have an announcment by the great Jonathan Green on the launch of the new courses at Axis. So without further ado...

Informal No 9 – Save Yourself an SEO Headache
CAST Bar, Playhouse Theatre, Nottingham
Thursday 25th September 7.30pm
Free as usual, open to all citizens AND GUESTS

The 9th Axis Informal has been lucky enough to secure the presence of the SEO legend that is Gavin Walker from Optillion Internet Marketing.

Gavin will take a broad look at the essential things that should underpin your approach to SEO. He’ll cover a mix of the most common mistakes made in SEO, myth-busting and the sacred ‘must do’ approaches to SEO.

Highlights

* Is SEO the solution to your problem?
* Style versus substance
* Targeting the right audience
* Doing the easy things first
* Avoiding the seduction of high maintenance regimes
* The value of patience and perseverance

Come along and listen to what could make or break the success of your existing and future websites.

Pic Lens 3D media walls

Posted on 23 Apr 2008 at 4:55pm

The web has long been dominated by websites that have tried to copy the "Apple look and design". This week a student on one of my courses introduced me to a small piece of software called Pic Lens from a company called Cool Iris. Basically the browser plugin for Pic Lens allows users to browser compatible sites through a fullscreen 3D wall of images or video that is very similar to what you see in the Apple iTunes media viewer, the iPhone and the Apple TV interface. It is really something that needs to be seen to be appreciated.

The cool thing from my point of view is how simple the plug in can be integrated into any website with very little effort. Basically all you need to do is create a simple media RSS feed and adapt it slightly to support the Pic Lens 3D wall. This can be both images and video. For those of you that maybe want to have a go, have a look at the Pic Lens webmaster integration guide which is pretty comprehensive.

I would be interested in seeing any attempts that might be attempted by the webmaster in AxisCommunity in creating 3D picture or video walls.

Enterprise Webmaster 2006 - 2010

Posted on 9 Apr 2008 at 10:51am

AxisCommunity Gathering 3
27 March 2008

The Drive Higher project dissemination event gave me the opportunity to say a couple of words about how the Enterprise Webmaster course has evolved since it’s conception in 2006 and where I thought the course and the future of the web might be going. A couple of people that attended asked me to post up links to some of the technologies that I talked about, so I’ve decided to go a step further and actually do a little article on what I was going to say if I’d had the time (I was handed the poisoned chalice of a room full of warm and hungry people who could smell the food being served – thanks Jonathan) and of course those all important links.

In 2006, I decided to leave behind a lot of the Microsoft network training that I was doing and start training something that I was already passionate about which was web development. I’d helped a number of customers maintain and upgrade their existing websites and had been frustrated by the lack of quality and consistency being put out there by “professional” web designers. For those that don't know me, I’m not really someone that likes to do anything by halves, so I decided that the focus of my new course would be Web Standards and Web Accessibility through XHTML and CSS.

At the time, the mention of Web Standards and building to web standards meant only one of 2 things. Either the web designer who was going to build your site would charge you an extra 2 grand on top of the original cost of the site or that you were some kind of techie standards zealot who was trying to force a restrictive set of rules on a creative medium. So, web standards was banded around as a buzzword and all those web builders who advertised one price for a “regular” web build and a more expensive price for a “standards compliant” web build should hang their heads in shame now. You contributed to the state of the web at the time. Others just didn’t know any better.

Web Accessibility was another term that was banded around as a marketing tool trying to get businesses to upgrade their sites to standards compliant and accessible sites at a premium cost. The Disability and Discrimination Act of 1999 had just been updated to include small to medium sized enterprises (SME) and this was used by many web builders to tell people they needed to be fearful of potential legal action if their sites did not comply. Actually making content accessible and available to a wider audience didn’t really factor into the reasoning (well, not until it was realised that Google just loved accessible content).

Let me get it out of the way first... Web2.0. The VC marketers dream. Let’s take some technology that has been around for a while, take a couple of vowels out and then label these newly named technologies Web2.0. I’ll leave it at that. Google Analytics had also just been released in beta and a lot of the students on the first Enterprise Webmaster course were interested to see what it would offer above and beyond existing stats packages. Most were pleasantly surprised. Myspace was dominating the social networking scene amongst the musicians and artists on the courses and I discovered the horrors that actually lay beneath the beast. The course also included a small section on RSS which showed promise in the beginning of being a hit with those that wanted to keep their audiences regularly updated, but I am yet to see a meaningful implementation of it by a student.

Two years have passed and Enterprise Webmaster 2008 remains fundamentally the same course, however conceptions about Web Standards and Web Accessibility have changed and technology has obviously moved on. Strangely enough, the course seems even more relevant now than it did 2 years ago. The industry has now caught up…

Building websites that comply with basic web standards is now something that is common place. Those who regularly build professional sites are building to a basic set of web standards. I used to ask a class of students to list their favourite websites and then I’d show them how poorly constructed the sites were. I’m now saying, “Oooh, look, it’s built pretty well”. The change in 2 years is still something I find pleasantly surprising. There is however, something dark and sinister about the reasons behind this change though. Yes, I am being a little overdramatic and sceptical, but I believe that a lot of this change is down to the realisation that well built web pages ranked higher in Google.

It’s true that the separation of content from presentation certainly helps but is getting better rankings really the reason to do things properly? What happens when search engines no longer care about the semantics and are intelligent enough to look at a page and place value on the content merely by its context? Do we then forget good practise and move onto the next traffic driving technique? For now I’ll satisfy myself in knowing that a lot of people are adopting the current set of standards and will hopefully continue along the path of righteousness even if search engines stray way from the path. Did someone mention zealots?

A pleasant side affect of this adoption of web standards is that they lend themselves naturally to accessibility. A tweak or two here and there and a well considered site can comply with many of the accessibility guidelines without much work. The web has become a much more accessible place in the last 2 years in the search to satisfy the web’s most famous blind user. Thank you, Google.

Facebook is currently the social networking tool of choice and it’s dominance on the web has got businesses sitting up and taking notice. Open data sources are becoming more widely available and useful at the same time, while the push from Apple with the iPhone has meant that mobile web browsing is coming more into the spotlight while on the course more interest is being shown in how standards will enable us to adapt our sites for mobile platforms. The second round of the browser wars bubbles along under the service as Microsoft battles it out against Firefox. It’s much less in your face this time as the user base of the web has dramatically changed since the last round of “our browser is better than yours”. The current user base doesn’t care which version of JavaScript or EcmaScript the browser comes with as long as it allows them to watch YouTube, browse Bebo or Facebook and doesn’t mess with their favourites.

So what will the Enterprise Webmaster audience experience in 2010? Well as technology moves forward obviously the accepted standards will evolve as well. We’ll no doubt move on to XHTML 2.3, DOM level 4 and CSS 3.2 along with whatever the latest standards will be for video content, podcasts, Flash design elements, ActionScript, GoogleMaps, FaceBookApi, JoomApi, Second Life, PDFs, ad infinitum. Yes, I think there will be appropriate standards developed for every aspect of web creativity meaning that we’ll have to start specialising. It’ll be impossible to be an expert in everything, knowing how to implement every standard for each required technology that may be used in a web build. This will lead to teams of standards specialists pooling their knowledge to work together to build standards compliant “web experiences”. I’ll do the standards compliant coding, Jonny will create the standard compliant web content, Paul will create the standards compliant design and Dudley will create standards compliant downloads and manage the project using standards compliant methodologies. Perhaps slightly extreme, but you get the idea. Luckily we’ll have all these social networks to help us find collaborators, eh?

What about accessibility though? It may go one of two ways. Either the technology standards will wholly incorporate accessibility as it is attempting to do at the moment, or accessibility will become the role of the user agent (browser). I’m obviously in favour of the latter as this would see accessibility handled in a uniform manner by the device chosen by the user rather than placed upon the designers and developers. This would require investment in the development of specialised user agents that would be intelligent enough to look at the design and content of a page and be able to contextualise the information appropriately. I’m not talking about enhancing the current crop of screen reader based user agents, but a whole new approach to the interpretation of web content ala the semantic web.

Finally, technology will continue for a while down the route that it is currently taking with information gathering becoming ever more prominent. Technologies like Phorm (news items) will be able to track the usage of individuals to the point where websites will know what mood you’re in and contextualise content based on your behavioural profile. We’ll have centralised identities so that once we’re on the web we’re recognised across all the sites we visit rather than have to login into each site individually and remember dozens of passwords. Technologies like Microsoft’s .NET passports are now being adopted in open source form through services like OpenID (wiki). All of our information will be held by a centralised provider of our choosing so that we can be targeted, monitored and profiled and be glad that we have a web that is now personally customised to our own browsing tastes.