At the last Fronteers meeting we (about 35 front-end developers) e-discussed with Eric Velleman (Accessibility.nl) about the Government Web Accessibility Guidelines. Are the guidelines realistic? I said e-discussed, since by a communication error Eric was on a holiday in France (we don’t exactly know what went wrong). However, using a web cam and an internet connection we were able to discuss the guidelines.

One thing we discussed were (large) menu structures. Should the menu in the markup be placed before of after the content? Screen reader users seem to expect the menu be before the content. If the content is placed before the menu, they are distracted and don’t understand what is going on. It is an habituation you can’t control, so putting a menu at the bottom of your mark-up looks like an unreasonable option (to me).

It also seems to be a myth that frames are bad for accessibility for screen readers. With a keyboard shortcut they can switch between frames, so a menu and the content are separated quite well. Some blind people prefer framed web sites over ‘normal’ web sites. This may sound like an recommendation of frames by me, but it isn’t. By the way, the iframe element will probably be back in HTML5.

The guidelines state that large menus must have an option to skip the menu and go straight to the content. These skip links are put on top (and sometimes also at the bottom) of an web page, and hidden via CSS for visual browsers. Some more about skip links can be found at Juicy Studio.

I thought it would be better to always use skip links. If more and more people use them, screen reader users may get used to them. Also, if you want the menu at the bottom then, it will be no problem to do that. Since the user gets the skip link first, they can decide to go to the content or the navigation. If you use more than one skip link, it is important to always put the skip links in the order the content and menu appear in the markup.

From now on I’ll provide skip links in the web sites I build, how about you?

One year and a day ago I posted for the first time over here. The first months I updated frequently, but very short and most of the times links to other posts around The shortest post did contain only a few words so the content was not very fantastic back then. Now I take much more time to write an interesting post.

The lat year was quite fun and interesting things happened. Back in February I set up my own business. Together with many others we started Fronteers, an association for front-enders. I also went to some cool meetings the past few months where I met many great web designers and developers. Also notable is that I’m a judge at CSS Off.

The next twelve months there are some things that will happen. First, I will turn nineteen next month. Also in November I might do several presentations related to front-end developing (all still pending). In may 2008 I hope to pass high school (I’m looking forward to University yet). Of course I’ll update my blog if there is something interesting.

By the way, I signed up for Twitter earlier today, so if you’d like to read personal stuff you might want to follow me.

Today it is Blog Action Day. One day to think about the environment. To think about what you can do for a better environment, even if it is a bit, since a better environment starts with yourself. The color green plays an important role in this, since almost everybody associates it with a better environment.

In the development of a web site green also plays a quite important role. Some people live for the green bar the W3C markup validator shows when a web page validates. The green color indicates everything is good, and that is also what a better environment is. Unfortunately nothing can be validated on how good they are for the environment, even web sites not.

Another green aspect of web development are Microformats. Microformats help people and computers interact with each other much easier, they are more balanced. Thinking about the environment also about getting a better balance between you and everything around you.

For the server-side programmers, I have this one: PEAR. Their web site is green, but that’s not the only equality between PEAR and a better environment. PEAR allows every developer to share and grab code others developed. Developers can learn and safe time by looking at code by others, or be nice for colleague developers by sharing their code. A greener world also is good for others, and people can learn from nature in many ways.

I almost forgot graphic designers. It’s a fact a higher percentage of the designers uses an Apple Mac. So it is good to know Apple was tackled down by Greenpeace to build greener Apples. It is a result of the Green My Apple website.

Concluding I can say web designers and developers can help the world to be much greener. If you have more ideas, I would love to hear: just drop a comment.

I just came back from Amsterdam, where Peter-Paul, Tom and I went to a notary to formally set up the association Fronteers. Fronteers, formerly known as the Guild of Front-Enders, is the Dutch association for front-end web developers (the guys and girls that know HTML, CSS and JavaScript).

After the (quite quick) visit to the notary, we went to a nearby café to celebrate the set up and also have our first meeting. We discussed some topics, nothing really new but more to have a clear view on what’s going on. We also hope to have the website ready soon, Krijn is working on that.

For all Dutch front-end developers that have been in a winters’ sleep for the past half year, as well as for the foreign visitors, a short introduction into Fronteers. It started April this year when Peter-Paul had the idea to bring the job as front-end developer to a higher level. The job itself isn’t respected within may web development companies, programmers and designers often do ‘the HTML‘. Also, the Dutch web accessibility guidelines are there for a time now, but the government and large companies don’t know which company can help them to build a web site compliant to those guidelines.

After the first two meeting we had over fifty interested front-enders, and that number grew once we made the idea public. Pretty quick there were plans for a conference (which took place exactly three weeks ago), and also life was put into some committees for education, certification and Flash (and some more).

So that was a brief introduction into Fronteers. Next is the announcement of the web site, where new members can sign up. We guess the number of members now is about 70 people, pretty much for an idea that started just a half a year ago. If you’re interested, stay updated via our mailinglist. I see Tom wrote a nice article as well about today, at the info.nl blog.

Cheers to Fronteers :)

A while ago I bought the book DOM Scripting: Web Design with JavaScript and the Document Object Model by Jeremy Keith. The title says it quite well, this book is about using JavaScript and the DOM to extend the user experience of web sites.

The first chapter gives some background information about the history of JavaScript. Not as extensive as ppk on JavaScript, but good for beginners. Turning the page to chapter two will let us learn the basics of JavaScript.

Other chapters will learn you how to use the DOM to manipulate the document and style of the web page. Also, a chapter about animation is included and that is not widely covered in JavaScript books I’ve read. In the last chapter you’ll use the discussed techniques to build a web site extended with JavaScript and of course the DOM.

I didn’t buy the book because I wanted to learn about the DOM, but more as a reverence and a source of inspiration to learn new techniques. The reverence part was satisfied by a nice chapter at the end of the book, including all DOM methods with details on how to use them. However, this book is not a great source of inspiration for a bit experienced front-enders.

The book explains very well on how and why to use graceful degradation, separated behavior and markup and backwards compatibility. For beginners that is really cool, I haven’t seen many newbie JavaScript programmers use those techniques and it is really good they are given good information on this subject. But as said, anyone who knows those techniques already will not be satisfied by this book.

You’re new to JavaScript and DOM, and are interested in this book? I can really recommend it for you. I think you might be want to read the preview at Google Books, or the sample chapter at the official website.