Reading List
NEWT, HTML5 etc
- Top story: the <main> element hits the HTML5 specs. I advise following the W3C specification: use it once per page so assistive technologies unambiguously know where content starts, eg where a “skip links” button should jump to. TL;DR: if you use <div id=”main”> or <div role=”main”> you can use the new element instead, once per page. Currently, the WHATWG spec is wrong. Big hand to Steve Faulkner for getting this through. The element is supported in Chrome dev channels (although needs its accessibility mapping sorted out) and Firefox nightly
- The “Holy Grail” technique – shocking news from the land of Apps built with hilariously-named frameworks: “initial pageload feels drastically quicker because we serve up real HTML instead of waiting for the client to download JavaScript before rendering. Plus, it is fully crawlable by search engines”. A Holy Grail technique indeed. Or, as we call it, Web development.
- DRM in HTML5 – Manu Sporny studies the spec: “I was also the founder of a start-up that focused on building a legal, peer-to-peer, content distribution network for music and movies. It employed DRM much like the current DRM in HTML5 proposal…The Encrypted Media Extensions (DRM in HTML5) specification does not solve the problem the authors are attempting to solve, which is the protection of content from opportunistic or professional piracy. The HTML WG should not publish First Public Working Drafts that do not effectively address the primary goal of a specification.”
- You can’t create a button – “If you expect the user to interact with something, then you need to use either a link or button … Links should be used whenever the action is a navigation (changes the URL) and buttons should be used for all other actions.
- Display VTT subtitles as an in-page transcript by Ian Devlin, Github code
- Keyboard events in Javascript are broken – Why JavaScript keyboard events are broken, how they are not yet being addressed
- JavaScript ‘this’ in Different Contexts
- Fluid and responsive YouTube and Vimeo videos with fluidvids.js – nifty little script if you don’t want to go and manually wrap videos in old posts with a fluid container
- Creating accessible custom made dialogs using WAI-ARIA by Gezmondo Citron.
- What size is my viewport? – Using JavaScript to get the actual viewport width.
- 2013 CSS Wishlist by Chris Coyier. Just as long as he knows that my 2005 wish for a way to correctly style song lyrics and poetry, which are all over the web (and code samples) take priority (so that you can distinguish between an authorial line break and a line break the browser has inserted due to narrow columns/ large font-size)
- On h.265 – “about 35-40% less bandwidth for the same quality … requiring about 4-5 times as much CPU power to decompress”
- On clarifying the <figure> element and better differentiating normative defintions from non-normative in #HTML5 spec by moi (see also Jeremy Keith)
- getUserMedia and Firefox tips from from Daniel Davis when getting shinydemos.com to work cross-browser
- Modern.IE – ” a dev center – free tools & resources – built so you can spend less time testing for the various versions of Internet Explorer”
Industry
- More women in engineering: Something that ACTUALLY WORKED. (Slideshare by CTO of Etsy)
- ICO to change cookie policy to recognise implied consent – goodbye silly “this site uses cookies!” widgets
- Leave Accessibility to the Experts Please – I’m firmly siding with Henny Swan’s dissent
- How Newegg crushed the “shopping cart” patent and saved online retail” – ‘Screw them. Seriously, screw them. You can quote me on that.’—Newegg’s lawyer Lee Cheng on patent trolls.
- It Is Now a Crime to Unlock Your Smartphone in the Land of the Free
- Yahoo’s Mayer Sees Future in Personalized, Mobile Web
- Top 10 failed social media websites (Infographic)
- Reasons why I unfollowed you – by Frances Berriman
- Early Thoughts on New Operating Systems – Ubuntu, Sailfish (Jolla/MeeGo), Tizen (Samsung’s update to MeeGo), Firefox; and some updates to classics BB10, WP8
Misc
- Things That Need to Die Before British Culture Can Move Forwards
- Come to Romania! Our women look like Kate – “The beer is cheaper, our women are hotter, and we’ve never photographed Harry naked – Romania cheekily hits back at the rumoured UK campaign to deter Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants.”
- It Takes Planning, Caution to Avoid Being ‘It’ – Group of Men Have Played Game of Tag for 23 Years; Hiding in Bushes, Cars
- Fuck Your Noguchi Coffee Table. Mean-spirited, churlish, misanthropic, bitter and petty. What’s not to bookmark?
- Menswear Dog photos of a dog. In menswear.
By the way, I’ve launched a new blog which will hopefully reduce the emailed questions I receive. It details what I’m wearing every day .
note: main was implemented first, a bit over a week ago, in Webkit and works correctly (i.e. VoicOver recognises it as a main landmark).