Bruce Lawson’s personal site

(Last Updated on 29 September 2020)

I’ve been working on a client project and one of the tasks was remediating some data tables. As I began researching the subject, it became obvious that most of the practical, tested advice comes from my old mates Steve Faulkner and Adrian Roselli.

I’ve collated them here so they’re in one place when I need to do this again, and in case you’re doing similar. But all the glory belongs with them. Buy them a beer when you next see them.

• How screen readers navigate data tables by Léonie Watson
• Short note on what CSS display properties do to table semantics TL;DR – changing the display property hides the semantics from the accessibility tree in some browsers and therefore from assistive tech.
• Functions to Add ARIA to Tables and Lists – Adrian shows how to restore table semantics with ARIA
• Short note on improving usability of scrollable regions – if your tables horizontally scroll, make sure that keyboard users can access the scrollers
• Fixed Table Headers – If you have scrolling tables, you might want ‘sticky’ headers that don’t scroll. Uncle Adrian shows you how.
• Tables, Tequila and Beer – Uncle Steve shows that simple tables don’t need the scope attribute to identify a th as a row or column header.
• Web Typography: Designing Tables to be Read, Not Looked At by Uncle Richard Rutter
• Table Design Patterns On The Web – Bonus link! Cousin Jing shows some different design patterns for responsive, accessible tables.

• News o’the Week: Antitrust: European Commission opens investigations into Apple’s App Store rules – “The investigations concern in particular the mandatory use of Apple’s own proprietary in-app purchase system and restrictions on the ability of developers to inform iPhone and iPad users of alternative cheaper purchasing possibilities outside of apps.”
• Related: Apple Threatens to Move Basecamp’s New Email App to Trash – “Scrutiny of Apple’s App Store policies heats up as the company heads into its annual software conference.”
• Igalia Chat – Brian Kardell sits down with Jeremy Keith and Stuart Langridge to chat about rendering engine diversity, history and the health of the web browser ecosystem.
• Flow: A New Browser Engine by Sam Sneddon
• Safari 14 Beta Release Notes
• Make your PWA feel more like an app – some nice little tips for making it more ‘native’.
• CSS custom properties and the cascade by Jeremy Keith
• CSS Custom Properties Fail Without Fallback – Matthias Ott looks at what you can do about the issue Jeremy raises
• Hybrid positioning with CSS variables and max() by Lea Verou
• Warning—Apple Suddenly Catches TikTok Secretly Spying On Millions Of iPhone Users – Tiktok on iOS caught stealing the contents of users’ clipboard every 2-3 keystrokes. “Now Apple’s welcome iOS 14 security and privacy changes have caught them red-handed still doing something they shouldn’t. Something they said was fixed.”
• Meaningful connectivity – Alliance for Affordable Internet pushes for its new standard: “We have meaningful connectivity when we can use the internet every day using an appropriate device with enough data and a fast connection.”
• Google blew a ten-year lead – “something happened at Google. I’m not sure what. But they stopped innovating on cloud software. Docs and Sheets haven’t changed in a decade. Google Drive remains impossible to navigate. Sharing is complicated.”
• SVGuitar – library to create beautiful SVG guitar chord charts directly in the browser
• Machine learning-generated Peanuts comics and an interesting rumination on what Art is: “In some ways, the model represents the disembodied essence of the Peanuts aesthetic, but do I have Charles Shulz soul? For many obvious reasons, I do not – this model knows nothing of the motivations, desires and intentions behind Charles Shulz and his works.”

(Last Updated on 19 June 2020)

• Link o’the Week 1: A user’s guide to CSS variables by Lea Verou
• Link o’the Week 2: Global and Component Style Settings with CSS Variables – “Or how I use CSS variables to create more manageable project styles and more portable patterns” by Sara Souiedan
• Optimizing keyboard navigation using tabindex and ARIA also by Sara Souiedan
• Flow browser passes the Acid tests – “Our goal for Flow is to render websites correctly the first time that anyone tries them. Most of the Acid3 subtests are going to make a real difference.”
• Introducing Alpine.js: A Tiny JavaScript Framework – “involves no build steps and provides all of the tools you need to build a basic user interface”. I haven’t used it yet but hear good things about it.
• CSS :is() and :where() are coming to browsers
• The Surprising Things That CSS Can Animate
• IBM quits facial-recognition market over police racial-profiling concerns – Every tech company should put out their statement on their tech’s use for “mass surveillance, racial profiling, violations of basic human rights and freedoms.
• Covid-19 makes it clearer than ever: access to the internet should be a universal right says Sir Uncle Timbo.
• PHP Marks 25 Years – “This week the web is celebrating 25 years since Rasmus Lerdorf released version 1.0 of his “Personal Home Page Tools (PHP Tools).” PHP is now used by 78.9% of all the websites whose server-side programming language W3Techs can detect.” – I ❤️ PHP.
• Me! Me! Me! corner: Beginners’ Guide To Writing Good HTML – my 5500 word article for beginners on writing good semantic HTML, using a Cheeky Girls fan site to walk through the thought process.
• Setting up Prince on AWS Lambda and API Gateway by Moi.
• Setting up Prince on EC2 with PHP – also me.

Bella’s in the witch elm
Regal in a taffeta gown
Queen of her forest realm
Autumn leaves form her crown

Bella’s in the witch elm
She won’t say how she came there
She’s still as seasons turn
And winter winds wind her hair

Beneath the cries of the weeping willow
You can hear the sighs from the witch elm’s hollow

Bella’s in the witch elm
wearing her gold wedding ring
She’s silent at the coming of Spring
At the maypole, children dance and sing

Bella’s in the witch elm
Wearing just one summer shoe
She will never tell
Someone put here there – but who?

Who put Bella where she can’t see
Who put Bella in the Witch Elm Tree? Who?

Words and music © Bruce Lawson 2020, all rights reserved.
Production, drums and bass guitar: Shez of @silverlakemusic.