See Getting personal: A few top ten lists for the background on this series of top ten posts (this is the fourth post in the series).The best way I know to make my mind off the troubles of the world and relax from everyday work is to play a computer or video game that really requires my full attention. Despite being very intense, I find that gaming helps me to sort of cool down my brain. And there are many, many computer games that have helped me relax through the years.What may come as a surprise to many is that I play a lot of computer games despite being a Mac user. That's right, there are computer games for the Mac! I bet you didn't know that unless you are a Mac user too . Yes, yes, ...

See Getting personal: A few top ten lists for the background on this series of top ten posts (this is the fifth and final post in the series).As you can tell from My top ten favourite computer games I do plenty of gaming on my Mac. But I don't only play games on my computer – I also have a PlayStation 2 and an Xbox 360 (I want to upgrade my PS2 to a PlayStation 3, but I'm waiting for the price to become a bit more in touch with reality).There are several reasons. One is that some games I really want to play aren't available for the Mac (most notably the Gran Turismo, Final Fantasy, and Grand Theft Auto series), another is that I find it more relaxing to play games sitting on my couc...

Many of the questions I get when I talk about accessibility are centered on the assistive technology used by people with disablitites. And since the first (and unfortunately often the only) kind of disability people tend to think about as affecting the way you use the Web is vision impairment, the questions I get are almost always about screen readers.To a lesser extent I get questions about screen magnifiers, which are mainly used by people who have some vision, but who are not completely blind.Obviously I try to answer those questions as best I can, mainly by using VoiceOver, the built-in screen reader in my Mac, to browse the Web, and by using the zoom feature in Mac OS X.But I'm not b...

Many books that have been released during the last couple of years choose to focus on one subject, be it HTML, CSS, JavaScript, accessibility, or something else. That works well for readers who have reached a certain level of knowledge of the book's subject and want to move on to expert levels.For people who are just getting started learning about Web development, a book that covers a wider range of subjects may be more appropriate. In Mastering Integrated HTML and CSS, Virginia DeBolt takes exactly that approach by covering HTML, XHTML, and CSS in an integrated way.The book covers everything from the very basics of HTML and CSS to writing XHTML and CSS for handheld devices and design ba...

I'm sure most people who have a website of some kind are interested in knowing that their site is up and running at all times, and would like to be notified if the site should be unavailable.Ideally your web host would be able to guarantee 100 % uptime, but in practice that can be hard for anyone to live up to. I know from personal experience that all sorts of strange and unfortunate events can lead to a site being temporarily offline.So, website owners want some way of monitoring the status of their site, and to be notified if it should be offline or not responding properly. But how? Well, one handy online tool that helps with that is Pingdom (based in Sweden, yay!), which I have been us...

It's ridiculous really, how quickly time can pass. It is seven weeks ago today that I started the vacation/parental leave that I mentioned in A new phase of life. But I would never believe that if I didn't look in my calendar.Time passes quickly when you have a baby to take care of. I have to admit that I have enjoyed these first weeks of being a father. Most of the time, that is. Those few nights when she simply did not want to sleep I could do without. Luckily there haven't been many of those. Yet.Time passes too quickly though, and today's date being August 7 means it's time for me to get back to work, both at NetRelations and here.There are some interesting projects coming up at work ...

On the about page of this site I used to call myself a "developer/designer/occasional writer". It's a bit confusing, and I still find it hard to know what to answer when someone asks me what I do for a living. Am I a Web designer? A Web developer? A Web programmer? All of them? Neither? It really is a difficult question to give a simple answer to.My answer depends on who is asking, when, why, and under what circumstances. Sometimes I'll say that "I work with the Web" or "I build websites", both of which are true but don't really say what I do. It would be easier to be able to give a short, simple, reasonably precise answer.In a way I am very much a designer, despite doing little to no gra...

Ever since first hearing about microformats a couple of years ago, I've tried to find opportunities to use them in my projects. To be honest, I found it a little difficult to see the benefit of using microformats.After seeing Tantek Çelik talk about microformats at @media 2006 in London, I kind of started seeing the point. But I still struggled, though I have started using microformats, both here and for client work. Maybe it's just me, but I find the microformats syntax incredibly complex, confusing, and hard to understand. And that is a little odd since it's supposed to be simple and easy to use.Because of my failure to fully wrap my head around microformats I decided to buy Micro...

On July 1 2007 I decided to leave the W3C HTML Working Group. My reason was not primarily lack of time due to my new phase of life, as some have guessed.Sadly, I left for much more troubling reasons. I left because I was fed up with the dismissive and hostile attitude a number of individuals in the working group have towards those who do not fully share their view of how the future of HTML should be shaped.I was sick of watching as people were being ridiculed, ignored or dismissed when they asked questions, voiced objections, or otherwise tried to contribute. It happened on the public-html mailing list, on #html-wg, the working group's official IRC channel, and on #whatwg, WHAT WG's IRC c...

It is, slowly but surely, becoming well-known that websites should be accessible to all people, regardless of any disabilities they might have. Many blogs, such as this one, contain lots of information about techniques for improving accessibility, as do the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.However, I don't see a whole lot of talk about usability testing with disabled users, and how to interact with disabled people when you actually do usability testing. And many Web professionals, including myself, who value accessibility highly don't always include people with disabilities in their projects, and don't necessarily test all websites they design and build with disabled users.But of cou...

Time for a bit of what in my opinion is Accessibility 101: input device independency. For some reason it is common to see otherwise nice uses of JavaScript made inaccessible by developers forgetting that not everybody uses a mouse (or some other pointing device).There are several groups of people who do not use a mouse or pointing device to interact with Web pages. A few examples:Mobility impaired people who cannot use a mouse at allPeople with motor impairments who can use a mouse but lack fine motor controlScreen reader users who do not use a mouse, or even a monitorPeople using mobile phonesLaptop users, since most laptops have really bad trackpads or other means of positioning the cur...

To people who have been following this blog for some time it may seem like I take every opportunity I get to mention how little attention content management system vendors in general are paying to web standards and accessibility. Come to think of it, that is probably a correct observation.Some have suggested that I try to reach out to CMS vendors in order to educate them instead of just complaining, and they are right. I haven't quite figured out how to do that, so when I learned about a web conference focused on content management I thought that attending would give me a good opportunity to connect with some CMS people.Content Management Forum 2007 (cmf2007) takes place in Aarhus, Denmar...

I'm sure many who read my post about cmf2007 last week thought "Yeah that sounds nice, but Denmark is too far away for me" or "I'd like to go to a Web conference, but I want something with a different focus".Well, there are a number of other Web related conferences and events coming up in the next few months, in different parts of the world, with different speakers and programs. Maybe one of them is closer to you or more in line with what you're looking for.The ones I'm aware of are these:dConstruct: Brighton, UK, September 7Internet Summit Austria: Vienna, Austria, September 12Webbdagarna: Malmö, Sweden, September 12Webmaster Jam Session: Dallas, USA, September 21-22Web Directions South:...

In a series of three long articles (Part I - Traditional HTML Semantics, Part II - Standardizing Vocabularies, and Part III - Directions in HTML Semantics), John Allsopp expands his thoughts on how the HTML based Web can be improved to allow for better semantics.After explaining what "semantics" actually means, John defines three different semantic classifications that an HTML element can belong to: structural Defines document structure. Examples: div, span, h1 - h6, ul, ol, dl, p. content Defines the type of content it marks up. Examples: abbr, address, code. rhetorical Defines rhetoric added by the author. Examples: em, strong.The full list, which includes attributes, ...

In several recent online and offline discussions on comment spam and other automated, improper use of forms, I have seen or heard people suggest using image-based CAPTCHAs (you know, those images of distorted letters and numbers) to prevent spambots and other programs from successfully submitting forms.Requiring the user to interpret an image of distorted characters and then enter those characters into a text input field may seem like a nice idea at first. But while it does offer some protection against spam, unfortunately it is also really bad for accessibility.The nature of graphical CAPTCHAs makes it difficult or impossible for people who are visually impaired, blind, or dyslexic to po...