Some people can memorize everything, and I am not one of them. So when a colleague asked about a certain attribute selector today, I could think of no better source than the one I refer to whenever I need to remind myself of selector syntax: http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-selectors/#selectors. You can be reasonably sure it’s complete and up-to-date.
Cool tool: Opera Notes
Something I didn’t pay much attention to until a few months ago is the Notes functionality built into Opera (desktop). I used to use Notational Velocity or SlipBox, which are both excellent.
Since I spend about 80% of my computer time in Vim and Opera, and since Opera is my primary browser (and e-mail client), using this functionality instead of a separate app works well for me. I don’t notice any difference in speed compared to Notational Velocity; the way they work is similar, but I like Opera’s integration with the browser, Opera Link and e-mail.
For those not familiar with Notes, I tried my hand at making a screencast.
A quick intro to Opera Notes from Stephen Hay on Vimeo.
What constitutes a good website?
Dear readers, friends and fellow web creators, I need your help. I would like to ask for your suggestions in the form of comments to this post.
The problem is the stigma attached to the term “accessibility”. Now we know that web accessibility achieves more than simply facilitating access to web content. But a lot of government organizations and businesses don’t see the need to even try and conform to accessibility guidelines.
As part of a group of organizations (the advisory group for the Dutch Web Accessibility/Quality Guidelines) concerned with changing this way of thinking, several of us are trying to compile a list of themes/categories/factors which can be considered building blocks of really good websites, or less-obvious benefits of accessible websites. I’m aware of many, but lots of people in this industry are so incredibly smart; it would be such a pity not to ask.
So I’m asking! The idea is to create a list of things like “interoperable”, “search-engine friendly/findability”, “archivable” etc. to help convince government organizations and businesses that there are lots of non-obvious benefits in conforming to web accessibility guidelines. “Cuts down on bandwidth usage” is fine. I’ll parse the list and try to group like-minded suggestions together to come up with some high-level themes. I will post the results and link to any known follow-up usage or derivative of the resulting list.
Even if you can only think up one thing, please add it to the comments! Ask your friends (but don’t spam :) ). Don’t worry too much about accessibility, just quickly note whatever you think makes a great website.
Care to chip in? What constitutes a good website?
