Web design quality standards

Hello guys,

I'd like to set up a list of web dev quality standards, but something
different from the W3C, something closer to the real world. Over the
years I've tried to follow accessibility guidelines, and I found that
in the end, I've lost many cool features that don't mean "evil
development" necessarily. For instance Flash used properly can be a
good thing. Same for Ajax, for embedded videos, etc...

My idea is having grades from 1 to 5 stars to qualify web sites, 5
being a very good site. The criteria are general-purpose to rate the
quality. I'd like to know what you think about the idea

I have set up a quick draft, and if you're interested, we could revamp
this paper: http://guidelines.dreamhosters.com

Thanks in advance for your ideas and suggestions!

"Charles A. Landemaine" <landemaine (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote

Hello guys,

I'd like to set up a list of web dev quality standards, but something
different from the W3C, something closer to the real world.

"Active links have no dotted outline".

If you mean the focus rectangle then removing it is a severe accessibility
issue. Without that focus rectangle anybody who does not use a mouse (for
whatever reason) cannot navigate the site.

I would suggest you make that a minus 5 star point rather than a 5 star one.

Once I saw this I rather lost interest in seriously considering the rest of
your points, other than to note that some of them seem rather odd and
misplaced.

--
Richard.

Charles A. Landemaine wrote:

Hello guys,

I'd like to set up a list of web dev quality standards, but something
different from the W3C, something closer to the real world. Over the
years I've tried to follow accessibility guidelines, and I found that
in the end, I've lost many cool features that don't mean "evil
development" necessarily. For instance Flash used properly can be a
good thing. Same for Ajax, for embedded videos, etc...

My idea is having grades from 1 to 5 stars to qualify web sites, 5
being a very good site. The criteria are general-purpose to rate the
quality. I'd like to know what you think about the idea

I have set up a quick draft, and if you're interested, we could revamp
this paper: http://guidelines.dreamhosters.com

Thanks in advance for your ideas and suggestions!

Good luck.

"Web standards" is an oxymoron. Perhaps a nice goal, but the W3C is a
total hash, nearly unreadable, browser devs try to observe it but find
it inexplicably dense and unreadable. And they then, each to their own,
interpret it in their own way, leaving us with clients (browsers) that
are, sometimes, miles apart on their attempt to conform to the
"standard." Go ahead, read the "standards" and let me know.

A standard that is only a suggestion is not a standard. A standard that
is poorly articulated and indecipherable is worse, it is chaos. I
suspect that is why Microsoft (so famously) decided years ago to go
their own way and attempt (in futility) to impose their proprietary (and
flawed) technology on the world.

We are lucky (at best) that the major browsers render any page in a
similar manner. And, if Web design is relegated to only the arcane
nit-pickers, we will be left with a Web that is not what it was
envisioned to be. And, frankly, pretty much useless to mortal man, and
only useful to commercial interests which can afford to hire those who
will design to a "standard" that can't spell W3C.

The good news is that there are more non-commercial pages than
commercial ones. So, unless you're shopping for a lamp shade, you
should still be able to find something useful. And, perhaps even design
a simple page that conveys useful information easily.

Or, hey, maybe sanity will out and save the day. Could be wrong.
Probably am wrong. I just long for a cessation of the insanity and an
adoption of an attitude of: "Well, hell, that'll work for two years,
let's do that!" And then, ten months or so later, the group goes:
"Dang! That worked great for 18 months! But, uh, oops! We need to
modify it so that ..." And then they all go: "Ok! That only took four
months! Great! Release the standard! Hell, we'll just need to release
an update in 3 months (although it'll take us six months ...) ... and
it'll take 14 months for the devs to mod all the browsers but ... uh ...
Yes! We're doing good because we are creating "standards!"

I think I need another drink.

--
Ed Mullen
http://edmullen.net
http://mozilla.edmullen.net
http://abington.edmullen.net
For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.

"Beauregard T. Shagnasty" <a.nony.mous (AT) example (DOT) invalid> wrote

Charles A. Landemaine wrote:

Thanks in advance for your ideas and suggestions!

Not using Transitional doctypes for new pages...

Not serving XHTML up as text/html.

--
Richard.

On Oct 28, 11:05 pm, Ed Mullen <e... (AT) edmullen (DOT) net> wrote:

"Web standards" is an oxymoron. Perhaps a nice goal, but the W3C is a
total hash, nearly unreadable, browser devs try to observe it but find
it inexplicably dense and unreadable. And they then, each to their own,
interpret it in their own way, leaving us with clients (browsers) that
are, sometimes, miles apart on their attempt to conform to the
"standard." Go ahead, read the "standards" and let me know.

Thanks, Ed. This is why I wanted to do something different, some
quality guidelines.

A standard that is only a suggestion is not a standard.

Then let's call it "guidelines"

What do you think about the idea? With this, we could help web devs
improve the quality giving them tips to improve and get a better
grade.
Thanks,

Charles.

On Oct 28, 10:57 pm, "Beauregard T. Shagnasty"
<a.nony.m... (AT) example (DOT) invalid> wrote:

Not using Transitional doctypes for new pages...

Good idea. I added it.
Thanks,

Charles.

On Oct 29, 1:45 am, "rf" <r... (AT) invalid (DOT) com> wrote:

Not serving XHTML up as text/html.

Thanks. Is it that important, Richard? What about the spread of
criteria ? Do you think it's done properly or do you think the rate
should depend on the number of checked criteria, whatever they are?

Charles.

On Oct 28, 10:47 pm, "rf" <r... (AT) invalid (DOT) com> wrote:

If you mean the focus rectangle then removing it is a severe accessibility
issue. Without that focus rectangle anybody who does not use a mouse (for
whatever reason) cannot navigate the site.

Thanks, I didn't know about that. But then I guess they can't play/
stop a Flash player...
Anyway, I removed it.

Charles.

On Oct 28, 10:47 pm, "rf" <r... (AT) invalid (DOT) com> wrote:

"Active links have no dotted outline".

If you mean the focus rectangle then removing it is a severe accessibility
issue. Without that focus rectangle anybody who does not use a mouse (for
whatever reason) cannot navigate the site.

Hi Richard, actually I tried to access links using keyboard tab and
it's working great!
I did this:

function blurAnchor() {
var anchors = document.getElementsByTagName('a');
for(i=0;i<anchors.length;i++){
anchors[i].blur();
}
}

<body onClick="blurAnchor()">

It blurs the anchor tags only when you click, so you shouldn't have
any accessibility issue with other devices.

Charles.

"Charles A. Landemaine" <landemaine (AT) gmail (DOT) com> writes:

On Oct 28, 10:47 pm, "rf" <r... (AT) invalid (DOT) com> wrote:
"Active links have no dotted outline".

If you mean the focus rectangle then removing it is a severe accessibility
issue. Without that focus rectangle anybody who does not use a mouse (for
whatever reason) cannot navigate the site.

It blurs the anchor tags only when you click, so you shouldn't have
any accessibility issue with other devices.

It's a (less important, but still there) accessibility issue with the
mouse. I was using a web application today [1] and found it helpful to be
able to see at a glance which the last link I'd clicked on was.

I also sometimes use a combination of the mouse and keyboard to
navigate (so, say there's a list of documents about a topic, I might
click to get the first one, and then use 'backspace, tab, return' to open
the next one), which this would break.

Of course, I also don't browse with Javascript enabled, so I'd not be
affected by this anyway, but other people might have it turned on.

[1] The application was a table of bug reports, one report per row,
with a link on each row that went to the screen to close or update
that report. I wanted to close several at once, and the reports were
large enough that only a few took up most of the screen (in a table
with 30 or 40 of them). It takes a few seconds to load each new page,
and from experience, I know that the quickest way to do this is to
open a whole bunch of edit pages in new tabs, then go through the tabs
closing the reports. Having the focus rectangle on the last clicked
link meant that I didn't lose my place after scrolling down to the
next one.

--
Chris