ODEON website and accessibility

[francis]

Interesting article on the ODEON's website (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3899685.stm) and some accessibility issues it has. As sites go, unless it's changed in the last few months, it is appalling. Vetruvious != happy

Why ODEON in captiols? Here's why (http://www.acronymfinder.com/af-query.asp?String=exact&Acronym=odeon&Find=Find) (the person concerned started the chain). Interesting fact of the day!

[francis]

This story also made Wired (http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,64253,00.html?tw=wn_story_mailer) and has comment from Zeldman, amongst others. Also on webstandards.org (http://webstandards.org/buzz/archive/2004_07.html#a000374) with more links.

[David]

I love the web and I love it because little people can make a difference. This is a perfect example - well done Matthew Somerville (http://www.dracos.co.uk/odeon/).

I'm hoping someone will take exception to CADTutor and give that the same treatment ;)

BTW I really like the text size switcher on the Wired site (http://www.wired.com/) - right hand of nav bar - excellent stuff.

[James]

Originally posted by David@Jul 23 2004, 9:53 am
I'm hoping someone will take exception to CADTutor and give that the same treatment ;)
Oh dear. Is that a challenge to Francis?

[David]

Certainly not! It's my mess and I intend to clean it up. I was hoping to have started work on the new CADTutor site by now but other (fee paying) work keeps getting in the way :rolleyes:

I will, however, be sure to let you help me get it right when I do start :P

[francis]

Ha ha!

Well, I actually made a start (http://www.24bit.co.uk/fs/2nav-bar.html) a month or so ago, but then got:

a: annoyed as I couldn't get it working well in IE
b: bogged down with other stuff.

But, if you decide against using either Suckerfish or Son Of Suckerfish (http://www.htmldog.com/ptg/archives/000050.php) dropdowns, you may be in with more luck. Those dropdowns work well, but I think I bit off more than I was prepared to battle with. One of the suckerfish menus works in Moz (can't remember about Op) but fails in IE.

The code is much cleaner, but there is a monster amount of CSS there - all of the rollovers use CSS (buggy in IE 5 and it will probably involve a hack to fix it I think) - if you toggle the CSS, you'll see the changes. Those JavaScript files you've got for the rollovers are huge!

[James]

(w00t) Francis, it's going to be a beautiful weekend - please go outside and enjoy it! :geek:

[francis]

Yeah I should, but I've got a backlog of work again so Saturday (at least part of) will be spent at the office. I've got stuff that is nearly a month late and really need to get done.

Next up: bottle of red, Blazing Saddles anniversary DVD and, probably, waking up at about 3am in front of the TV. That, excluding the DVD, is my usual Friday PM.

The markup and style handbook (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1590593812/qid%3D1090611487/202-6134499-2323026) has a section on image replacement in CSS and it mentions the need for a tiny IE5 hack for the method I've used. There are other methods out there that achieve the same thing. Y'all should check out the author's website (http://www.simplebits.com/) - it's good and has some bookmarkable CSS stuff in there including this clickable link background images (http://www.simplebits.com/notebook/2004/07/18/clickable.html) and bulletproof slants (http://www.simplebits.com/notebook/2004/07/12/bulletproof_slants.html) tutorials/articles that I've bookmarked for later.

Right - off to attack my liver...

[David]

Originally posted by francis@Jul 23 2004, 6:43 pm
Ha ha!

Well, I actually made a start (http://www.24bit.co.uk/fs/2nav-bar.html) a month or so ago, but then got:

a: annoyed as I couldn't get it working well in IE
b: bogged down with other stuff.

:blink: Ha! - I don't believe you did that. This is obviously a man who knows a challenge when he sees one (either that or completely bonkers :D ).

I have to admit that I had more-or-less decided that the new site should work without drop-down menus although I think they work well on the current site and users seen to like them as a navigational tool.

Those drop-downs were constructed using DHTML Menu Builder (http://software.xfx.net/utilities/dmbuilder/), a neat little app. that takes all the hard work out of that mass of JavaScript. There are others about now but DMB is the original. I wonder how long it will be before someone builds a similar app. that creates CSS drop-downs. Some time I suspect. The good thing about JavaScript is...

"Worried about compatibility? Worry no more!
DHTML Menu Builder generated dhtml menus code is 100% compatible with, Internet Explorer 4, 5, 5.5 and 6.0, Netscape Navigator 4, 6 and 7, Opera 7, Safari and Konqueror under Windows, OS/2, Mac and Linux!"

Oh, and it works in Moz as well but strangely they don't mention that.

[francis]

Zeldman has good commentary on site redesigns and also has good stuff on the Odeon issue (http://www.zeldman.com/daily/0704d.shtml).