CSSquirrel A look at web development and web design by Kyle Weems

On December 16th, 2009, I had the opportunity to do something I’d been meaning to do for a while. I gave a presentation (in front of an audience, even) about web standards! I was invited to speak at Refresh Bellingham, which was a great experience. Discussing the topics of CSS3, HTML5 and Mobile, I definitely bit off a larger chunk than I needed to (in the future I think I’ll pare the experience down to CSS3 and HTML5 unless it’s for a much longer time format), but by the end of the presentation I felt like I’d done a good job of entertaining the audience and maybe teaching some of them a thing or two.

And, by George, that was a really good feeling.

Entitled: “The Ghosts of Web Standards Present: CSS3, HTML5 and Mobile”, the whole thing ran about an hour and fifteen minutes. Fortunately people laughed at all of my jokes, so it wasn’t too torturous. I talked about the varying level of support in modern browsers for new CSS3 and HTML5 features (and how that shouldn’t matter), as well as my thoughts on the need to be ready for mobile devices today in our designs. If I did it again, I’d probably put more advanced CSS3 techniques and HTML5 tricks in, as I uncovered a whole slew of new things I’d not experimented with before while doing research for it.

Although the slides don’t contain the majority of my witty dialog (I’m so modest), I’ve put them up (after some corrections and modifications) for you to look at if you’d like. The background will flash into it’s proper place two seconds after the page loads, by design (I had some issues with the popdown request for the geolocation interfering with the way the background looked on the slide projector).

The Ghosts of Web Standards Present

This Monday was the third annual Blue Beanie Day, which promotes and celebrates the use of web standards to create accessible, semantic web content. Therefore, it provides a fitting backdrop to the Curious Tale of Max Weir. I’m not here to bash Max, as he’s received enough of that already. Rather, I’m spinning out a sort of parallel narrative that will cast a poorly timed comment into the light of folk lore for future web designers to consider.

On Monday one Andy Clarke, British rock star of the web design world, posted an open letter to Taylor Swift on his blog. This letter expressed his admiration for her as a musician and a gentle critique of a serious problem with her website: it is almost completely inaccessible to those with visual impairment or the inability to use a mouse. He details it quite thoroughly and politely, aware that as a musician (and not a web designer) she likely had no awareness of the issue or even touched the code of the site. This post provided a great example of the purpose of Blue Beanie Day, pushing web standards awareness to those who need it.

All was well until around comment #9 on Mr. Clarke’s post, by one Max Weir. You should read the linked comment for the full text, but the gist of his missive is summed up by the following line: This site is an interactive flash experience and thats all there is to it, there are designers who think accessibility, web standards etc and those who focus on creating a immersive experiences only.

This comment by a man who’s Twitter bio is “Design is form and function on equal level”, posted on an accessibility blog post on Blue Beanie Day, formed a nexus of baleful energy that summoned from the deep places one of the dreaded behemoths of nautical lore, the Beanicornupus. Identifiable by its massive blue beanie and gossamer spiral horn, this ravenous monster consumes the flesh of designers who think that “cool media experiences” are more important than ensuring a site can be used by impaired visitors and would consider that making a site this way is a valid business choice.

Poor Max didn’t stand a chance, suffering many grievous wounds at the hands of the commentators even after Andy tried to call them off. Like Captain Ahab, Max underestimated the beast. Today’s comic portrays his final moments, swallowed up by the Beanicornupus, calling out his defiance at the very end.

Max’s gruesome fate can provide a cautionary tale for us all. Web standards aren’t some sort of optional flavoring for some websites. They’re needed by every one of them. Those who choose to ignore that will face mockery from their website creator peers, and their clients will lose customers who aren’t able to access their sites. Although we’d like to think that only musicians, big uncaring media conglomerates, and our grandmothers don’t know the gospel truth of web standards, the fact is, as Andy said (when asking his commentators to stand down): It’s sobering that on Blue Beanie Day where we, who pride ourselves on our support for standards and accessibility, pat ourselves on the back for a job well done, must not forget that the job that Jeffrey started with Designing With Web Standards is far from done.

Jeffrey Zeldman was the subject of a .net interview (glossy PDF version is available here) last week. In addition to slick photos of the man himself in the PDF version, the article’s main meat is near the end, where Zeldman offers advice on surviving the crunch, which includes some basic customer-service skills that I wished was common sense to anyone in any industry, but sadly isn’t. He also includes a tidbit that mirrors advice I’ve taken to heart in the past:

“And a final piece of advice: do cool free stuff that doesn’t make you any money. It will totally grow your brand and get you clients. Putting yourself out there with your writing or your design (especially if you’re a quiet, socially shy nerd who doesn’t like going out and socialising at parties) will help a lot.”

I like that. And, frankly, I’m glad he’s done that himself. The articles and information at A List Apart was a key component from my transition of website wonkery as a side hobby to a career.

To close things up, Zeldman is called “The Godfather of CSS” in the article’s closing paragraph. Immediately my mind slipped to bad movie cliches with that, so today’s comic follows that mobster-related tact, also guest-starring Jason Santa Maria. (I know he’s not a Happy Cog employee these days, but I’m sure he still helps Zeldman out in a pinch.)

It’s a short read, so go read it. There’s some good advice in there, as well as a nice perspective on the past and future of web standards.

As I’ve mentioned a couple times by now, I’m a strong believer in the fact that you never stop learning in this industy (the web [insert noun here] industry). Well, at least if you want to stay relevant and keep finding work. This is why I’m always excited by the various web design/development conferences out there, and especially love the endless deep pool of tutorials that exist online for any Joe or Sally to read.

As much as I’ve teased Opera in this site’s comics, I really have to hand it to them. Recently Opera revealed a website that’s devoted to the very concept of web education: the Opera Web Standards Curriculum. It’s got about twenty articles devoted to web design and development, and there’s the promise of more on the way. These aren’t quickly written tutorial blog posts, but polished well written articles that are meant to give a good foundation for anyone interested in web standards and development.

The majority of the articles contained there thus far are mostly about history of the web, the concepts of web standards, basic web design theory, and HTML. Which I think is brilliant, since this is the area that most online tutorial sites skip right past, and thus there’s the most immediate need for. Discussions of things like CSS I’m sure are in the near future, and I’m excited to see their take on it.