Subtil

A tweet from David Hobbes tipped me off to an article about why code samples can be a good thing when hiring people, or for that matter judging a consultants work before signing them up for a job. Even though I don't do much proper programming myself I do a fair bit of (X)HTML and CSS and the points made in the article are just as true when it comes to that. From a HTML or CSS code sample you can get a good understanding of whether the person is using proper and semantic markup or not, adhers to current web standards, knows accessibility, handles metadata in a consistent way etc. Too often I've seen divitis and classitis all over the place as well as outdated table layouts in code from web companies that should know better.

This brings me to the point of my own site. I'll spare you the trouble of viewing the source code - it's not optimal. I'm using a standard drupal template since I moved operations over a year ago. After some corrections it validates, sure. But being valid isn't necessarily the same as being good. I prefer my code more compacted and would like to see way less classes and div's spread around.

By the way, this might be this years only blog post. I only managed one in 2008. In the mean time I'm trying out twitter again. When it was new, I just didn't get it I guess. Still didn't get it half a year ago. But I must admit i probably wouldn't have written this post hadn't it been for a tweet.

Still undecided btw.

One of my favorite hang-outs, The Royal Swedish Opera, has recently re-designed their web site with the aid of self-proclaimed market leader of accessibility - FunkaNU. The previous site certainly had some problems but so does this one.

Andy Clarke finds himself in the new, green version of Zeldmans orange book that made CSS men out of many a font-style boy.

The IE Team over at Microsoft is locking down Internet Explorer 7 for shipping and has published a list of all the CSS changes made.

Attended @media2006 in London last week and had a great time. Met some really nice people and made a bunch of new friends as well as talked to some very approachable giants in the field.

Jeffrey Zeldman keeps his head clear as always. The article Web 3.0 is highly recommended reading.

Lo and behold, the Web Standards Project has managed to get microsofts attention. They've formed an accessibility task force together and will work together to better understand and execute on Web standards as defined by standards bodies such as the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

The Web Standards Project has formed an Accessibility Task Force. Much needed. Molly's got a good list of readings on the matter for anyone who wants to catch up.

Roger Johansson lists reasons for tension between web accessibility and web standards such as validity alone is no guarantee for accessibility.