April 2004 Archives

Flash and Web Standards

Firstly a warning: I am no Flash expert by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, I avoid it like the plague whenever possible.

But, you know, sometimes you have to embed a Flash movie in HTML. It's quite commonly recognised that the method provided by Macromedia is completely inadequate because it involves the embed tag. Crap.

But then Drew McLellan came up with 'Flash Satay' that involves using only object tags. Great. That's what they're there for. But this method requires fiddling with the Flash movie itself because of IE's problems with streaming.

Now Hixie's come up with a valid, non-embed method, which relies on Internet Explorer's conditional comments. Proprietary ugliness.

From what I understand, the following code (taken from 'Flash Satay') should work but by using it, IE simply won't stream:

<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="movie.swf">
<param name="movie" value="movie.swf" />
</object>

To get around the streaming problem, IE needs the classid and codebase attributes, but these mess up the whole thing for other browsers. And this is where Hixie's method works.

As far as I can see, the best way to embed Flash in HTML is to serve up different code to different browsers using PHP, ASP or whatever.

Again, not perfect by any means.

There has to be a better way...

Wednesday 21 April, 2004 (10:50 AM GMT) | Comments (13) / Permanent Link

Top Dog Top 10

The 'Top Dog Top 10' is a feature I'm going to try out on the Dog Blog now and then - top-10 lists of web related stuff based on mind-numbingly complicated and highly scientific methodology (that's right, it's my own simple opinion).

Shoot me down in flames or call me an enumerating wizard - it's all about the debate, so offer your own thoughts and opinions...

Top Dog Top 10 Web Standards Sites

Kicking things off I thought we'd go for something quite general - the TDT10 of web sites that promote web standards.

This list is based on quality of content (both of the subject matter and the clarity of writing) and influence.

Oh, and I've not included the W3C. That would be too obvious.

If I'd written this list a year ago it would look very different - new players come, old players go and some leap forward or tail off. This is the here-and-now:

CSS Zen Garden - The most incredible designs on the web that really show what you can do with CSS whilst maintaining structured HTML.
A List Apart - Articles that, although sometimes a bit hit-and-miss, are often at the cutting edge, pushing the boundaries of web design further than any other site.
Mezzoblue - Good discussion and solutions to web design issues more frequently that any other major web log.
Simple Bits - For Dan Cederholm's sage advice and especially his 'Simple Quiz' feature.
CSS Vault - Like the Zen Garden, an excellent resource for seeing how it's done and learning by example.
WaSP - The first place to go for specifically web standards related news.
The Daily Report - Still influential, when the Godfather of web standards has got something to say it's usually worth listening to.
Andy Budd Blogography - Articles, news, links and opinion from a man with his finger on the pulse.
Whitespace - Ridiculously frequent, well-written articles about web design from Paul Scrivens.
Stop Design - Good quality advice and intelligent, thought-provoking opinion.

There's only room for ten on the list - those just outside include Asterisk, hicksdesign, Simon Willison, Max Design and Meyerweb.

Monday 19 April, 2004 ( 3:55 PM GMT) | Comments (10) / Permanent Link

A Few Links...

I don't normally like making an entry on the Dog Blog just to post links, but a few things have come up that I think are worth mentioning...

Zen Garden 100

CSS Zen Garden marks its 100th design with a cool Eric Meyer / Dave Shea collaboration. It's like those classic comic book team ups - Spiderman vs. Superman or something.

On a side note, although I seem to keep unnecessarily banging on about the Zen Garden (you go there anyway, right?), number 98 is a corker. Has this one been saved up? Is it exaggerating to say this is the best in the 100?

Developing With Web Standards

Roger Johansson of 456 Berea Street has published an English translation of Developing With Web Standards, a thorough overview of the whys and hows of using web standards. This is a great introduction - it's worth keeping an eye on this man.

Oh...

...and the UK's Disability Rights Commission have published their report into web accessibility. It's a PDF. Very accessible.

It says things like a vast majority of websites are inaccessible, the Government isn't doing enough, blind users are the worst affected and the WAI Content Guidelines are insufficient (to which the W3C has responded).

Thursday 15 April, 2004 ( 1:24 PM GMT) | Comments (5) / Permanent Link

Hosting Dilemma

I've used a lot of hosting companies in the past. A LOT. And they've all been crap in one way or another, be it reliability, customer service, unwarranted demands for money / threats to sue me etc. etc.

They've all been crap except for one - Titan Internet. I've been using them for a few years now and it has been the home of HTML Dog since the start. I would recommend them anyway, but with my experience of the bafflingly large number of terrible hosting companies, this lot really stand out from the crowd.

So here's the problem. HTML Dog is now regularly going over its bandwidth limit. WAY over it. Pretty impressive for a mere collection of such lightweight pages. And now, justifiably, Titan want some more cash. The thing is, they're not the cheapest hosting company in the world (not that they're the most expensive by any means) and HTML Dog obviously doesn't make any money.

Should a non-profit organisation delve deep into their (pretty empty) pockets for guaranteed quality of service and avoidance of hassle, or should they opt for an alternative (I've heard good things about Newnet) that offers much more bandwidth at a more affordable price?

Wednesday 14 April, 2004 ( 9:28 AM GMT) | Comments (17) / Permanent Link

Consecutive Links

Consecutive links bug the nipples off me.

By consecutive links I mean a whole load of content that has one link after another in it. I see why it's done - because there's more than one link that applies to a certain statement, but there's got to be a better way.

I was brought up to believe (that's right, it coincided with potty training) that the text that makes up a link should be the actual description of what's going on at the destination of that link. But in the above example, for example, neither 'one', 'link', 'after' or 'another' describe anything on their own. 'one link after another' does but not 'one', 'link', 'after' or 'another'.

But how else would you link to more than one place when referring to just one thing?

Tuesday 13 April, 2004 (11:09 AM GMT) | Comments (9) / Permanent Link

Peek-a-boo: Another method for hiding HTML

Picture this situation: You have a paragraph with links in, separated by commas. You want to keep the commas in the HTML because that's grammatically correct and because you want to adhere to WAI WCAG 1.0 checkpoint 10.5. What you don't want however is to display those commas. You could use this HTML:

<p><a href="this.html">This</a><span class="ttt">, </span><a href="that.html">That</a><span class="ttt">, </span><a href="theother.html">The Other</a><span class="ttt">.</span></p>

And then you could apply some CSS technique for hiding the 'ttt' class.

But the HTML is bloated. It would be much more preferable to just have:

<p class="ttt"><a href="this.html">This</a>, <a href="that.html">That</a>, <a href="theother.html">The Other</a>.</p>

But how to get rid of the commas? How about this CSS:

.ttt {
	position: relative;
	left: -999em;
}

.ttt a {
	position: relative;
	left: 999em;
}

The paragraph is yanked out of sight and then the individual anchor elements spring back into place. Peek-a-boo.

Monday 5 April, 2004 ( 2:44 PM GMT) | Comments (18) / Permanent Link