Readable Web » Accessibility

Developing With Web Standards by John Allsopp

Richard Fink — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 18:00:50 +0000

In his book, the Blind Watchmaker, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins writes:

— Explaining is a difficult art. You can explain something so that your reader understands the words; and you can explain something so that the reader feels it in the marrow of his bones. To do the latter, it sometimes isn’t enough to lay the evidence before the reader in a dispassionate way. You have to become an advocate and use the tricks of the advocate’s trade.

John Allsopp knows the tricks. And luckily, for those of us who work with things web, his field is web development. If you want to know what’s going on today and in the near term, Developing With Web Standards will take you through it all, step by step.

Snapshots And More

Like its “sister” volume, Designing With Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman and Ethan Marcotte, Developing With Web Standards is like flipping through a book of “snapshots”. Each chapter gives you a picture of one aspect of web technology along with the occasional zoom-in on things of particular importance. Seasoned web developers will find in it a valuable review. And no matter how much you know, or how familiar you think you are with something, I guarantee that at some point you’ll find yourself thinking:

“Hey, I didn’t know that. Why didn’t I know that?” Hah!

For myself, I found the chapter on Canvas and SVG especially useful because, frankly, I haven’t paid much attention to Canvas and SVG. (Is there such a thing as keeping up with it all?) And since the book is liberally sprinkled with links and sources for further study, I not only get John’s expert analysis, but a leg-up on how to learn more.

I would also recommend it highly for people who are only vaguely familiar with web development and would like to learn. It’s not a basic primer by any stretch, but it’s written in a friendly and clear style that helps a lot when you’re trying to make sense of a thing for the first time. Yes, you will learn some things, but more importantly, you’ll come away with a clear idea of what it is you don’t know. And when you’re new to field of knowledge, finding out what it is you don’t know can be the hardest part.

The Soul Of An Educator

In addition to authoring, publishing, and software development, John Allsopp is co-founder of Web Directions – which puts together incredible conferences on web development all around the world.

When I grow up, my ambition is to speak at a Web Directions conference and get to rub shoulders with people like John Resig, Steve Souder, and Mark Boulton.

John Allsopp, good luck with the book.

EOTFAST: A New And Essential Product For @Font-Face Web Fonts

Richard Fink — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 01:57:27 +0000

We’re proud to announce Readable Web’s first software development effort: EOTFAST.

The site is up and EOTFAST, along with documentation, a supporting utility font and HTML EOT test page is ready for download.

With EOTFAST, font designers, web designers, and developers can create natively compressed EOT font files for use with any web domain. There are no “root string” restrictions, as with Microsoft WEFT. Convert once, use anywhere.

Savings in file size typically range from 45% to 70%.

Cut Font Files Down To Size With EOTFAST

For example, a first-rate screen font like Droid Serif starts out at 169kb as a TTF font file with the full character set but as an EOTFAST file it weighs in at only 80kb. With still the full character set. Compression is lossless.
Please stop by the EOTFAST site. Further announcements will appear in various forums in the coming days.

The documentation contains very useful information for font designers looking to prepare their fonts for use on the web.

EOTFAST is a must-have for anyone looking to use @font-face web fonts today or for years to come – for as long as Internet Explorer has a substantial user-base.

EOTFAST 2.0 Is Already In Work

Version 2.0 is already in work. I’m using a Beta of it right now. And as soon as certain technical issues are ironed out, conversion from TTF to EOTFAST will appear as an online service, as well. Tools for the WOFF format are in the pipeline, too.

Deliver @Font-Face Web Fonts Efficiently Today, Not Just In The Future

EOTFAST works to deliver web fonts to half a billion Internet Explorer users efficiently today – not in some distant the future as many in the font industry would prefer to see happen.

Here at Readable Web, we want better, and more accessible, screen typography and we want it as quickly as possible. Every day that a web designer chooses – for aesthetic reasons alone – techniques that will defeat a screen reader is a day that we are not willing to wait.
This time, Internet Explorer is NOT a problem. @Font-Face has existed in IE for twelve years. It works, it works well, and we’ve got the test pages to prove it.

We’ve been very supportive of initiatives like the new WOFF format which now has its first implementation in Firefox 3.6. But WOFF has a bit of catching up to do now, with EOTFAST.

My co-developer Philip Taylor and I thank you in advance for your support. EOTFAST is released as open-source under the Apache license.

Utilities like Microsoft WEFT, ttf2eot, the Font Squirrel EOT generator, and font-design firm Ascender Corp’s tool for EOT “Lite”, are now obsolete.

Designing With Web Standards, Third Edition

Richard Fink — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:00:18 +0000

Required Reading

As used by Jeffrey Zeldman and co-author Ethan Marcotte, the term “web standards” is a catchphrase that refers to writing web pages using, as a basis, a group of free and open technical specifications. The core specs being HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Think of them as the three legs of a tripod upon which all else rests. In no way futuristic, this has already happened. HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are at the heart of publishing in the 21st century. DWWS3 is largely about authoring with these and other related specs in smart and efficient ways that could, more simply and accurately, be labeled best practice. The first edition of DWWS in 2003 was in large part a work of advocacy. But six Internet years have passed and today it’s mainstream. As the link says, Required Reading.

Finding The Cost Of Freedom

I’m a New York City kid raised in Brooklyn. When I was small, I used to wait out on the stoop for my Dad to come home from work. The first thing he did was check the mailbox. And I remember a day when the mail contained his yearly income tax statement. Now, paying taxes is fodder for many a sitcom joke, so even as a little kid I knew people liked to complain about taxes. But my Dad had a more accepting, even appreciative attitude. I asked him how he felt about it and he said, “It’s just the price of being of being an American, that’s all.” My Dad, a child of the Great Depression, son of immigrant parents, and a Jew, felt that whatever the tax, it was more than a fair bargain for his own personal slice of the American dream.

People who come to web design from backgrounds in print – where the physical size of the page is known ahead of time, and where precise, physical, “optical” sizes rule, and where 550 years of technological development lend stability and certainty to the end result – are often shocked by the lack of precision and uniformity that you have to deal with in web design. Likewise shocked are programmers who are used to a black and white world where the code is either error-free and compilable, or not. And who are used to writing installable programs with access to features of the operating system that web pages don’t have.
For these folks, the guesswork and workarounds and accommodations of web design seem insane. In the face of this uncertainty and unpredictability they ask, “Why is it like this? Why?”

Because there is no central authority – like Microsoft – to dictate what is “correct” or “incorrect”, that’s why. A consensus must be reached and that takes time. And because we are moving, today, through a transitional corridor, that’s why. We’re going to get it wrong or almost right for awhile before we get it quite right. That’s one of the reasons I write this blog.

I wasn’t always convinced, but I am now, that precision and predictability in web design will come in time. One of the reasons is the perceptible change in mood since the first edition of Zeldman’s book was published in 2003. In the battle for the hearts and minds of web authors, standards have won. The idea that the on-ramp to the information superhighway should remain free and clear of the encumbrances of proprietary technology – copyrights, patents, and so forth – has not only won, but in the minds of young developers, it’s a given. Twenty years ago, the default was having to pay a license fee and free was unusual. Today, the default is free and paying for a license, the exception. Developers fresh out of college have trouble even comprehending any credo other than “share and share alike”.
It took a few governmental smacks upside the head to achieve it, but even within Microsoft – with regards to the core of Internet Explorer, at least – I believe the idea of keeping browser technology a commercial no-fly zone has finally won out.

And so, I look upon the current need for hacks and workarounds and forking and sniffing and object detection the way my Dad did paying income taxes: it’s the price of freedom, and of the urgent need to keep the Internet as free and open to all as it can be.
It’s a price I have to pay right now, as an author, for my slice of opportunity.

Jeffrey Zeldman, Ethan Marcotte, good luck with the book.