Accessibility
From the ‘don’t comprimise design for accessibility’ stable comes this little tip – how to make a submit button look like a link button:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd"><!-- dean.edwards/2004 --><!-- keeping code tidy! --><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> <head> <!-- compliance patch for microsoft browsers --> <!--[if lt IE 7]><script src="ie7-standard.js" type="text/javascript"></script><![endif]--> <style type="text/css"> input[type="submit"] { border: 0px inset; background-color: transparent; color: blue;text-decoration: none; cursor: pointer; } input[type="submit"]:hover { color: red;} </style> </head> <body> <form ID="Form1"> <input type="submit" value="My Link Button" ID="Submit1" NAME="Submit1" /> </form> </body></html>
OK, not that simple, this also uses the excellent IE7 stuff from Dean Edwards to enable IE 6 to support...
Just been reading on Matt Bethers blog on a technique by Már Örlygsson on a great way of doing popups (disclaimer: I know, popups are evil...fall of civilization...STDs etc....), which if you *really* have to use them is just the best way I've seen - especially as it would *seem* to be more accessible than other methods. Oh, and there's some great comments on that post which cover all sorts of other issues.
During this current break I've been doing my usual 'read shed-loads' routine, read the entire Ender series by Orson Scott Card (well, the last 4 books), Code Complete 2 (US), Neurolinguistic Programming for Dummies and last but not least, Designing with Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman (US). All of these books were excellent and I'd recommend them all. I'd like to concentrate however on the Web Standards one.This is a really though-provoking book for one such as myself (i.e., aging web coder who remembers the bad old days of NCSA Mosaic); I have been pretty lacking in my HTML markup skills and...
Just noticed this link in a post on Kent Sharkeys blog. The article by Scott Mitchell covers various methods of making ASP.NET 1.1 based sites conform to WAI accessibility guidelines (or US Section 508 if you prefer :-)). It is still stunningly annoying (and frankly unbelievable) that the ASP.NET Hotfix Rollup is still not easily downloadable - almost a year since it was released, neither have I seen it on the MSDN subscribers download site (although apparently a few CMS 2002 updates actually include it!).
I found some really interesting articles on the new ASPNETResources.com site, including stuff on Doctypes which was pretty good and tips on getting CSS2 Intellisense support in VS.NET - worth keeping an eye on how this site develops methinks! Also a particularly interesting blog on the site covering similar subjects...
UPDATE: Poking around some more, just noticed they have a really great article on XHTML support using Response Filters in ASP.NET - excellent coverage!