A List Apart

Apps vs. the Web

There's an app for that, and you're the folks who are creating it. But should you design a web-based application, or an iPhone app? Each approach has pluses and minuses—not to mention legions of religiously rabid supporters. Apple promotes both approaches (they even gave the web a year-long head start before beginning to sell apps in the store), and the iPhone's Safari browser supports HTML5 and CSS3 and brags a fast JavaScript engine. Yet many companies and individuals with deep web expertise choose to create iPhone apps instead of web apps that can do the same thing. Explore both approaches and learn just about everything you'll need to know if you choose to create an iPhone app—from the lingo, to the development process, to the tricks that can smooth the path of doing business with Apple. Good Help is Hard to Find

Help content gets no respect. For one thing, it is content, and our horse-before-cart industry is only now beginning to seriously tackle content strategy. For another, we assume that our site is so usable, nobody will ever need the help content anyway. Typically, no one is in charge of the help content and no strategy exists to keep it up to date. On most sites, help content is hard to find, poorly written, blames the user, and turns a mildly frustrating experience into a lousy one. It's time to rethink how we approach this part of our site. Done well, help content offers tremendous potential to earn customer loyalty. By learning to plan for and create useful help content, we can turn frustrated users into our company's biggest fans. Kick Ass Kickoff Meetings

Too many kickoff meetings squander the busiest, most expensive people's time reiterating what everyone already knows. If every meeting is an opportunity, why waste your first one? By asking stakeholders tough questions before the kick-off, and using the meeting itself to explore ideas and build relationships, you can turn a room of mutually suspicious turf battlers into an energetic team with shared ownership of the end-product and the kind of bond that can sustain the group through the challenges ahead. No One Nos: Learning to Say No to Bad Ideas

You can't create what clients need when you're too busy saying yes to everything they want. As a user experience designer, it's your job to say no to bad ideas and pointless practices. But getting to no is never easy. Proven techniques that can turn vocal negatives into positive experiences for you, the client, and most importantly, the end-user include citing best practices and simple but powerful business cases; proving your point with numbers; shifting focus from what to who; using the "positive no"; and, when necessary, pricing yourself out. JavaScript Minification Part II

Variable naming can be a source of coding angst for humans trying to understand code. Once you’re sure that a human doesn’t need to interpret your JavaScript code, variables simply become generic placeholders for values. Nicholas C. Zakas shows us how to further minify JavaScript by replacing local variable names with the YUI Compressor. SVG with a little help from Raphaël

Want to make fancy, interactive, scalable vector graphics (SVGs) that look beautiful at any resolution and degrade with grace? Brian Suda urges you to consider Raphaël for your SVG heavy lifting. Prefix or Posthack

Vendor prefixes: Threat or menace? As browser support (including in IE9) encourages more of us to dive into CSS3, vendor prefixes such as -moz-border-radius and -webkit-animation may challenge our consciences, along with our patience. But while nobody particularly enjoys writing the same thing four or five times in a row, prefixes may actually accelerate the advancement and refinement of CSS. King of CSS Eric Meyer explains why. Supersize that Background, Please!

Background images that fill the screen thrill marketers but waste bandwidth in devices with small viewports, and suffer from cropping and alignment problems in high-res and widescreen monitors. Instead of using a single fixed background size, a better solution would be to scale the image to make it fit different window sizes. And with CSS3 backgrounds and CSS3 media queries, we can do just that. Bobby van der Sluis shows how. Stop Forking with CSS3

You may remember when JavaScript was a dark art. It earned that reputation because, in order to do anything with even the teensiest bit of cross-browser consistency, you had to fork your code for various versions of Netscape and IE. Today, thanks to web standards advocacy and diligent JavaScript library authors, our code is relatively fork-free. Alas, in our rush to use some of the features available in CSS3, we’ve fallen off the wagon. Enter Aaron Gustafson’s eCSStender, a JavaScript library that lets you use CSS3 properties and selectors while keeping your code fork- and hack-free. Taking Advantage of HTML5 and CSS3 with Modernizr

Years ago, CSS browser support was patchy and buggy, and only daring web designers used CSS for layouts. Today, CSS layouts are commonplace and every browser supports them. But the same can't be said for CSS3 and HTML5. That's where Faruk Ateş’s Modernizr comes in. This open-source JavaScript library makes it easy to support different levels of experiences, based on the capabilities of each visitor’s browser. Learn how to take advantage of everything in HTML5 and CSS3 that is implemented in some browsers, without sacrificing control over the user experience in other browsers.

accessibility web - Google News

Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown Joins World Wide Web Foundation's ... - Business Wire (press release)
Thu, 02 Sep 2010 16:25:53 GMT+00:00

Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown Joins World Wide Web Foundation's ... Business Wire (press release) Throughout the world, the Web Foundation leads programs that empower people to use the Web to nurture local economies and improve access to education and ... and more »

Captions on the Web - Pittsburgh Post Gazette
Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:43:22 GMT+00:00

Captions on the Web Pittsburgh Post Gazette That mandate is now extending to Web video. Both the Senate and House versions of the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of ...

Staples, Office Depot, OfficeMax Are Sued For Their Web Sites—And Much Of The ... - StorefrontBacktalk
Thu, 02 Sep 2010 08:44:54 GMT+00:00

Staples, Office Depot, OfficeMax Are Sued For Their Web Sites—And Much Of The ... StorefrontBacktalk Those are usually reserved for manufacturers, although the ways retailers handle debit cards, gift cards, micropayments and site accessibility have ... and more »

California, Boston and Chesterfield County Lead 2010 Best of the Web Winners - Government Technology
Wed, 01 Sep 2010 19:06:42 GMT+00:00

California, Boston and Chesterfield County Lead 2010 Best of the Web Winners Government Technology Both California and Boston, the top winner in the city category, made Web accessibility on mobile devices a priority in 2010. One of Boston's new mobile ... and more »

JOHN STOSSEL: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished? - FOXNews
Thu, 02 Sep 2010 15:07:08 GMT+00:00

JOHN STOSSEL: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished? FOXNews The ADA prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities, requiring businesses to provide the disabled "equal access" and to make "reasonable ... and more »

The Google/Verizon FCC Proposal - Benzinga
Thu, 02 Sep 2010 15:11:00 GMT+00:00

The Google/Verizon FCC Proposal Benzinga In the absence of net neutrality, bigger sites will dominate the net through accessibility and smaller sites with tighter budgets will suffer as a result. ... and more »

Dummies' guide to Web accessibility for disabled people - Daily News & Analysis
Sun, 29 Aug 2010 03:26:08 GMT+00:00

Dummies' guide to Web accessibility for disabled people Daily News & Analysis Hence, the key is to enable the user to use same “screen reader” across web pages. This can be done by complying to Web Content Accessibility guidelines, ... and more »

Study: increase enterprise data usability, save billions - ZDNet (blog)
Thu, 02 Sep 2010 03:27:04 GMT+00:00

Study: increase enterprise data usability, save billions ZDNet (blog) A new study released by Sybase found that businesses can save significant amounts of money simply by increasing the usability and accessibility of ... and more »

Gmail, Skype now in India's crosshairs - CNET
Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:52:01 GMT+00:00

Gmail, Skype now in India's crosshairs CNET The Indian government made waves recently by targeting Research In Motion's BlackBerry devices over data accessibility. The government contends that by ... and more »

Namco Networks Extends PC Hit, Mishap: An Accidental Haunting, to iOS Devices - Business Wire (press release)
Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:05:52 GMT+00:00

Namco Networks Extends PC Hit, Mishap: An Accidental Haunting, to iOS Devices Business Wire (press release) “With the PC version ranking number one in the Hidden Object category for Jay is Games' Best of 2009 Awards, we wanted to extend the accessibility of this ... and more »