The topic of version targeting has been all the rage the last 2 days, following Aaron Gustafson’s article for A List Apart and Eric Meyer’s companion piece. IE8 has not only passed the Acid2 test, but in this release it will be taking a new direction on version control, allowing us developers to, rather than rely on the DOCTYPE declaration to attempt to keep our sites in rendered intact, asign a meta element with the browser versions for which the site was coded and tested against. This meta element would look like this:

<meta http-equiv=”X-UA-Compatible” content=”IE=8″ />

Of course, in theory, if all browsers adopt version targeting, you would be able to enter content=”IE=8, ff=2.1, saf=3.0;” so all browsers would perform as though it was the day you coded it.

The logic Microsoft uses to explain their reasoning for going this route in IE8’s development makes perfect sense:

We realized that “Don’t Break the Web” should really be translated to “Don’t change what developers expect IE to do for current pages that are already deployed.”

The benefit, of course, is that if you code and test in IE6, you state this in the meta element or HTTP header, and the browser “pretends” to be IE6 and renders the site accordingly, behaving as the back version of the rendering engine would have. Great. So your code is locked in time, and no matter how many versions of a browser come after, your site will not break. It’ll look the same forever.

However, if you omit the meta http-equivalent, the browser just acts as the backdated version - so IE 8 will act like 7 and render the page using the IE7 rendering engine instead of defaulting to the current standards mode. Read the rest of this entry »

Accessibility for the web has become a hot topic these days as Target, Inc. finds themselves in the throws of a California court case for their lack of accessibility of Target.com. While Target’s site has undergone a lot of updates to become more accessible to handicapped users since the last time they were in court, on Oct. 14th a judge found that their efforts to date are just not enough. So how much is enough? Well, regardless of disability, a user should be able to navigate the site regardless of disability and reach their “target” objective - in the case of Target, that’s usually buying something (or emailing customer service, checking order statuses, etc.). Read the rest of this entry »

As entire frameworks and bundled Web 2.0 applications are becoming abundant on the open source front, the assumption that only profit-earning businesses can have the luxury of functional application add-ons to their sites such as social networking features, blogs, and wikis is quickly dissolving. This article is geared toward providing some uses for these frameworks for nonprofit organizations and a few resources for free (or cheap) out of the box solutions that can be integrated or even become the backbone of a nonprofit site.

At Object Adjective, we’ve been working to develop such components for some of our nonprofit sector clients. And as awareness of the accessibility of web 2.0 application frameworks is becoming abundant, more non-profits are beginning to ask, is there something out there that could benefit my organization at an affordable rate? In most cases, the answer is yes. Both prepackaged frameworks and sites that host these featured services are readily available, and there are solutions to meet nonprofit initiatives, regardless of organization size.

Prepackaged frameworks can be easily installed by a web developer and can decrease costs enough to allow nonprofits to extend their sites to include new application functionalities and features without breaking the bank. Someone still has to install and customize these packages to accommodate the specific needs and objectives of the organization, and design the front end visual elements/UI, so it’s not a freebee, but development dollars are significantly cut down. Many medium to large size organizations stand to benefit greatly from putting some funding into extending their site: with an enhanced web presence, comes more recognition and more public involvement, and can be a great tool to grow a non-profit organization and increase donor awareness as well as program awareness. Read the rest of this entry »

The number one complaint that keeps coming up with the iPhone is the keypad accuracy. People are having trouble typing on it and there is only one answer: type with your nails! Functional nail fashion is not a new thing: The eighties were riddled with people sporting the “coke nail” - a long pointy pinky finger nail used to scoop the sniff-able drug out of it’s baggy and easily deposit under the nose where it can be inhaled with ease in any public restroom.

Also a product of the 80’s was the Lee Press-on-Nails - which is either the catalyst for or a cheap knock off of acrylic nails popular in salons at the local mall of the 1990s. And perhaps this faux finger trend is not as bad as we have made it out to be. You’ve seen it at the bank, at the Walgreens store near your house and a million other places. The speed and accuracy with which people with long fake nails type is uncanny. So perhaps the best way to remedy the iPhone typepad inaccuracy is iPressOn Nails.

Available in all different base colors and a variety of Apple decals to match your simply branded iPhone, these stylish appendages are the solution to the biggest problem in user hardware Apple overlooked since not making the Mighty Mouse trackball cleanable. And as quickly as metrosexual men have come to love their polishless man-icures in the local salon, the iPressOn nail is available in clear, for the slightly more masculine user. Coming soon is the rainbow “old school” Macintosh Apple decal, expected to be popular with both gay men and women, and the gold n’ diamonds decal for the bling-lovin’ urban crowd.

So what are you waiting for - get yours today!

These days, developers have so many tools out there to make our jobs easier. From huge databases of useful scripts and css tricks, resource and learning sites to more extensively fine tune our skills, to full-scale webapp frameworks, whatever we need is at our fingertips. In this article I’m particularly interested in what we refer to as “canned javascript” - handy little packaged scripts that you can call from your html pages and ta-da! It works. Visual effects, ajax server requests…you name it. There’s a neat little Campbell’s Soup can of timesaving bliss out there for you to snag. Canned javascript couldn’t be easier to use, and the hours saved from coding and debugging the scripts yourself are well worth giving up the bragging rights of having done it yourself with bootstraps in hand. Read the rest of this entry »