Accessibility posts

For years, web designers have been using graceful degradation principles to make sure visitors in older browsers can at least see the content on their websites, even if they don’t see it exactly how the designer intended.

Graceful degradation let designers design for the newest and best browsers without completely alienating those using older browser versions.

And just because those with older browsers often got a less-than-optimal user experience didn’t deter designers from placing their focus squarely on the newest technologies and techniques, rationalizing that those using older browsers were either used to it or should just upgrade.

Progressive enhancement gives us a better option. Rather than focusing on browser technologies and support, PE focuses on content.

As most designers would certainly agree,...

Whether it’s your portfolio, a blog, a marketing web site, or a collection of games, we all want to attract visitors to our website and to ensure that they have a pleasant experience.

Usability measures the level of a user’s experience and can be characterized by how easily a given task can be completed; whether it’s done with prior knowledge, or by having the user learn a new way to interact. I think Jakob Nielson probably explained it best when he said:

“Usability is a quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use. The word “usability” also...

Because the web is a changing and ever evolving organism, it’s important to build sites that can grow with it and easily ride the current instead of drowning when a new wave approaches.

Clean markup and building with web standards not only helps you do this, but will save you both time and money in the long run.

As the web expands, so the technologies that it uses grow with it. While HTML has been around for a long time, it has acquired quite a few sidekicks along the way.

First Javascript, then CSS, XML and later AJAX. Wide adoption of HTML 5 is just around the corner, with Firefox, Safari, Opera and Chrome already enjoying nearly full HTML 5...

I know, I know…none of us creative types want anything to do with coding past the very basic HTML/CSS we need to know to get our designs to the developers.

Doing development is something for those programming grunts, those code jockeys, those geeks.

Why should we enter the trenches of development when it’s so nice up here with the Photoshop brushes, afternoon...