Tag: markup

HTML5 Table Template

Posted on June 8, 2010 in Structure by Jeff Starr

A good designer knows that tables should not be used for layout, but rather for displaying columns and rows of data. HTML enables the creation of well-structured, well-formatted tables, but they’re used infrequently enough to make remembering all of the different elements and attributes rather time-consuming and tedious. So to make things easier, here is a clean HTML5 template to speed-up development for your next project:

<table dir="ltr" width="500" border="1" 
			summary="purpose/structure for speech output">
	<caption>Here we assign header information to cells 
			by setting the scope attribute.
	</caption>
	<colgroup width="50%" />
	<colgroup id="colgroup" class="colgroup" align="center" 
			valign="middle" title="title" width="1*" 
			span="2" style="background:#ddd;" />
	<thead>
		<tr>
			<th scope="col">Name</th>
			<th scope="col">Side</th>
			<th scope="col">Role</th>
		</tr>
	</thead>
	<tfoot>
		<tr>
			<td>Darth Vader</td>
			<td>Dark</td>
			<td>Sith</td>
		</tr>
	</tfoot>
	<tbody>
		<tr>
			<td>Obi Wan Kenobi</td>
			<td>Light</td>
			<td>Jedi</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Greedo</td>
			<td>South</td>
			<td>Scumbag</td>
		</tr>
	</tbody>
</table>

Ahh, gives me goose bumps just looking at it. You can use this code with any markup language, whether HTML5, HTML 4.1, or any flavor of XHTML. Here is how this basic template looks in the current web page 1 (using different data and with styles removed):

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IDs are anchors, too.

Posted on September 14, 2009 in Structure by Bill Brown

While browsing the internet these days, I see a lot of this:

<body>
...
<a name="top"></a>
...
<a href="#top">- Back to Top -</a>
...
</body>

There’s an easier, better and prettier way. CSS Signatures are all the rage these days. If you’re not familiar with a CSS Signature, it’s basically nothing more than an ID on your body tag, like this:

<body id="www-domain-tld">

The fundamental purpose of the CSS Signature is to allow a user to specify style adjustments to your site in their own user style sheets. Whether or not users are actually capitalizing on this is a discussion for another day, but doing this has other benefits like having an extra id to use when dealing with CSS specificity.

Additionally, we can use this to capitalize on a little known fact about HTML and anchors: you can use anchors to jump to any element on your page with an ID attribute.

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Sexy HTML List Tricks

Posted on August 16, 2009 in Presentation, Structure by Jeff Starr

Behold the ubiquitous list elements, <ul> and <ol>! These two sexy elements help millions of websites display lists of information in clean, semantic fashion. Without them, we’d be crawling around like filthy cavemen, eating dirt and howling at the moon.

But these list elements aren’t just sexy, they are also extremely flexible, enabling us humble designers to create robust list configurations that are semantically versatile and highly customizable. We all know how to throw down a basic list:

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The Power of HTML 5 and CSS 3

Posted on July 19, 2009 in Presentation, Structure by Jeff Starr

[ Electrical Surge ]

Web designers can do some pretty cool stuff with HTML 4 and CSS 2.1. We can structure our documents logically and create information-rich sites without relying on archaic, table-based layouts. We can style our web pages with beauty and detail without resorting to inline <font> and <br> tags. Indeed, our current design methods have taken us far beyond the hellish era of browser wars, proprietary protocols, and those hideous flashing, scrolling, and blinking web pages.

As far as we’ve come using HTML 4 and CSS 2.1, however, we can do better. We can refine the structure of our documents and increase their semantic precision. We can sharpen the presentation of our stylesheets and advance their stylistic flexibility. As we continue to push the boundaries of existing languages, HTML 5 and CSS 3 are quickly gaining popularity, revealing their collective power with some exciting new design possibilities.

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CSS Implementations of the Rich and Famous

Posted on October 26, 2008 in Presentation by Jeff Starr

[ Robin Leach of 'Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous' ] A great way to improve your CSS skills is to check out the stylesheets used by other websites. Digging behind the scenes and exploring some applied CSS provides new ideas and insights about everything from specificity and formatting to hacks and shortcuts. Learning CSS by reading about ideal cases and theoretical applications is certainly important, but actually seeing how the language is applied in “real-world” scenarios provides first-hand knowledge and insight. While there are millions of standards-based, CSS-designed websites to explore, studying a few of the Web’s elite players and CSS experts helps to put things into perspective by providing context for subsequent CSS investigations. Prime candidates include industry leaders, standards buffs, CSS specialists, professional bloggers, and other successful establishments. In this article, we reveal the CSS implementations used by the following “rich and famous” websites:

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Multiple Loops and Multiple Columns with WordPress, (X)HTML and CSS

Posted on September 1, 2008 in WordPress by Jeff Starr

Recently, I have been getting a lot of requests for multiple-loop configurations in WordPress. It seems that multiple-column, multiple-loop configurations are in high demand these days, especially ones that display posts like this:

  • First column, first loop: display posts #1-5
  • Second column, second loop: display posts #6-10
  • Third column, third loop: display posts #11-15

Using WordPress and a little CSS, this configuration is relatively easy to accomplish. Let’s cut right to the chase..

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Does Google Hate Web Standards?

Posted on June 15, 2008 in Standards, Websites by Jeff Starr

Consider the Google home page — arguably the most popular, highly visited web page in the entire world. Such a simple page, right? You would think that such a simple design would fully embrace Web Standards. I mean, think about it for a moment.. How would you or I throw down a few lists, a search field, and a logo image? Something like this, maybe:

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Content Negotiation for XHTML Documents via PHP and htaccess

Posted on March 26, 2008 in Function, Standards by Jeff Starr

[ ~:{*}:~ ] In this article, I discuss the different MIME types available for XHTML and explain a method for serving your documents with the optimal MIME type, depending on the capacity of the user agent. Using either htaccess or PHP for content negotiation, we can serve complete, standards-compliant markup for our document’s header information. This is especially helpful when dealing with Internet Explorer while serving a DOCTYPE of XHTML 1.1 along with the recommended XML declaration.

According to the RFC standards 1 produced by IETF 2, web documents formatted as XHTML 3 may be served as any of the following three MIME types:

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CSS/(X)HTML Tutorial: Hovering Accessibility Jump Menu

Posted on March 19, 2008 in Presentation, Structure by Jeff Starr

[ ~{*}~ ] Recently, a reader named Don asked about this theme’s accessibility (accesskey) jump menu located at the top of each page. Several people have commented that they like the way the jump menu “lights up” upon gaining focus. Whenever a user hovers their cursor over the region at the top of the page, all links in the jump menu change to a more visible color. Then, as the cursor moves over the various menu items, each jump link is further highlighted with an even brighter color and an underline. This progressive focusing is best seen in browsers that support the CSS :hover pseudo-class (e.g., Firefox, Opera, etc.), however the menu remains useful even in CSS-challenged browsers (e.g., Internet Explorer). In this article, I explain how the Perishable Press jump menu is built using Web standards via CSS and (X)HTML, and then provide the specific code required to emulate the jump menu as it appears here at Perishable Press.

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XHMTL/CSS Remix: Creative Commons License

Posted on March 16, 2008 in Presentation, Structure by Jeff Starr

Not too long ago, I played with the idea of releasing article content under a Creative Commons (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0) License. At the time, I wanted to host my own copies of the two associated CC license pages. During the process of uploading the pages to my own server, several minor adjustments (regarding image paths, etc.) needed to be made to the source code. After tweaking a few things in the XHTML code, I began snooping around in the pages’ CSS files. Eventually, I found myself rewriting the entire CSS and XHTML files for both documents. Although this sort of activity is not unusual for me to do, I admit that it is borderline obsessive/compulsive and perhaps even a bit paranoid. Nonetheless, the reworked CSS and XHTML documents are cleaner, less redundant, and better optimized (in my humble opinion) than the originals. Further, the remixed pages are fine-tuned with a hyper-critical design aesthetic. To my eye, they present much tighter than the original versions. But hey, that’s what the spirit of Creative Commons is all about, right? Sharing, remixing, and improving content? In any case, redesigning these pages was good fun and good practice, even though I have since decided against licensing any of my content via Creative Commons 1. So, rather than simply deleting these brief redesign exercises, I have decided to post them online and share them with anyone who might be interested in such esoteric dabblings. You never know who might find them useful! ;)

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Pimping the Details, Part 1: Post Content

Posted on March 2, 2008 in Blogging by Jeff Starr

[ ~{*}~ ] In today’s highly competitive blogosphere, every edge counts. There are many aspects of a site or blog that can be easily acquired. Fancy themes may be purchased, nifty plugins are freely downloaded, and even snazzy content is immediately available. Indeed, setting up a decent-looking blog is so easy that virtually anyone can do it. Even so, just spend a little time at most sites and check out a few of the details. How is the writing — grammar, syntax, and punctuation? What about links and images — are they equipped with intelligent titles and alt attributes? As you read through a few posts, do you get a sense that the author has taken the time to fine-tune the content? Unfortunately, many bloggers fail to take the time to focus on the details. Bloggers that do take the time to embellish their content with details provide quality and value to their readers. Fortunately, managing the details is a snap once you find your groove. To begin this series of articles on “Pimping the Details,” let’s focus on one of the more prominent areas of concern: the content of your posts. How many of the following details have found their way into your blogging routine?

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What is the Difference Between XHTML 1.0 Strict and XHTML 1.1?

Posted on January 27, 2008 in Structure by Jeff Starr

As some of you (e.g., Louis) may have noticed during the recent site redesign, I decided to switch the default doctype from XHTML 1.0 Strict to XHTML 1.1. Just in case you were wondering, XHTML 1.1 is different than XHTML 1.0 in three important ways 1:

  1. On every element, the lang attribute has been removed in favor of the xml:lang attribute
  2. On the a and map elements, the name attribute has been removed in favor of the id attribute
  3. The “ruby” collection of elements has been added

Beyond these three differences, XHTML 1.1 is identical to XHTML 1.0. Personally, I chose to markup my current design with XHTML 1.1 because of its advancement of the web-standards paradigm: complete separation of structure, behavior, and presentation.

References

Absolute Horizontal and Vertical Centering via CSS

Posted on September 25, 2007 in Presentation, Structure by Jeff Starr

Recently, a reader named Max encountered some scrolling issues while implementing our absolutely centered layout technique. Of course, by “absolutely centered” we are referring to content that remains positioned dead-center regardless of how the browser is resized. After noticing the scrollbar deficiency, Max kindly dropped a comment to explain the issue:

…the div solution works well, only one problem maybe somebody can help: if you make the browser window smaller then the div is -> the scrollbar doenst fit right und you cant scroll over the whole area…

Apparently, because the horizontal/vertical centering method outlined in our original article employs absolute positioning with negative margins, resizing the browser to be smaller than the centered division results in cropped content that is inaccessible via scrollbar. Although this is the first I have heard about this issue, I went ahead and examined the alternate centering technique via the link generously shared by Max.

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Rethinking Structural Design with New Elements in HTML 5

Posted on August 21, 2007 in Structure by Jeff Starr

[ Image: Tyrannosaurus Skull ] HTML 5, also known as Web Applications 1.0, provides new markup elements that will change the way you design your web pages. The new elements replace commonly used divisions in web documents, facilitating an even greater degree of separation between structure (HTML) and presentation (CSS). Indeed, in many documents, the new elements will structure the document while providing enough hooks to render obsolete previously required divisions, classes, and identifiers. Let’s take a look..

New Structural and Semantic Elements in HTML 5

Structural Elements

The new structural elements in HTML 5 consist of the following:

  • header
  • section
  • article
  • nav
  • footer

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The Friendliest Link Targets in the Neighborhood

Posted on June 20, 2007 in Structure by Jeff Starr

[ Image: Fred Rogers with Shoe ] The target attribute for anchor elements (<a>) specifies the location in which the referenced document should load. For example, to open a link in a new window, we would use a target value of _blank. Although this is a commonly employed technique, the target attribute has been deprecated by the W3C and is not valid (X)HTML. Regardless, the target element remains a useful tool for practicing designers and developers. Here, we present the attribute values for the target element:

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Embed Flash or Die Trying

Posted on April 17, 2007 in Accessibility, Function by Jeff Starr

[ Image: 50 Cent ]
Embed Flash or Die Tryin’ Web designers and developers looking to embed Flash content into a web page currently enjoy a wide variety of methods from which to choose. The most common methods vary along several key dimensions, including standards-compliance, user-friendliness, and universal support. Some methods make it easy to provide alternative content, others enable auto-activation of Flash content, while others feature plugin-detection functionality. In an attempt to round-up the myriad techniques, this article presents nine of the most useful, practical, and popular methods for embedding Flash content.

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Embed Flash and Video via the object Tag

Posted on January 29, 2007 in Accessibility, Structure by Jeff Starr

Embed Windows Media Player via the object tag

Here is the general format for including .wmv files in web pages:

<object type="video/x-ms-wmv" data="http://www.domain.com/path/to/winmovie.wmv" width="340" height="280">
  <param name="src" value="http://www.domain.com/path/to/winmovie.wmv" />
  <param name="controller" value="true" />
  <param name="autostart" value="true" />
</object>

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Embed External Content via iframe and div

Posted on January 2, 2007 in Structure by Jeff Starr

By using an <iframe> within a <div>, it is possible to include external web content in most any web document. This method serves as an excellent alternative to actual frames, which are not as flexible and definitely not as popular. Indeed, with CSS, the placement, sizing, and styling of div’s provides endless possibilities for embedding external or even internal web content into pages that would otherwise require the use of frames, Flash, or JavaScript. This method works on any modern browser, as well as any old browser that understands both <div> and <iframe> tags. Simply add the following code to your document and style according to your specific needs:

<div style="position:absolute; left:77; top:77; width:377; height:377; clip:rect(0,381,381,0); background:#FFF;">

 <iframe src="http://www.google.com/" width="377" height="377" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="no" scrolling="yes" style="border-width:2px; border-color:#333; background:#FFF; border-style:solid;">
 </iframe>

</div>

Here is the code again, this time commented with explanatory information:

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Theme Edits for IE7

Posted on October 31, 2006 in Perishable, Websites by Jeff Starr

This post is a working repository of code edits and other changes made to Perishable Press themes in order for them to function properly in Internet Explorer 7 (IE7)..

Jupiter Theme
*:first-child+html div.comwrap {
	overflow: visible;
}
Lithium Theme
*:first-child+html div.comwrap {
	overflow: visible;
}
Casket Theme
Removed html selector from first ruleset.

Exploring the (X)HTML Link Element

Posted on October 31, 2006 in Structure by Jeff Starr

Most Web authors are familiar with the <link> element included within the <head> element of many (X)HTML documents. The <link> element enables authors to associate external resources to the (X)HTML document. <link> element references include various types of metadata, navigation, and styling information. This brief post provides examples of these and other important uses of the (X)HTML <link> element.

<!-- indicate the starting location -->
<link rel="start" href="http://domain.com/directory/" />

<!-- indicate the previous item -->
<link rel="prev" href="http://domain.com/directory/prev/" />

<!-- indicate the next item -->
<link rel="next" href="http://domain.com/directory/next/" />

<!-- indicates the index location -->
<link rel="contents" href="http://domain.com/directory/index.html" />

<!-- indicates location of a help file -->
<link rel="help" href="http://domain.com/directory/help.html" />

<!-- indicates location of a site feed -->
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="http://domain.com/directory/feed.rdf" />

<!-- indicates location of FOAF metadata -->
<link rel="meta" type="application/rdf+xml" title="FOAF" href="http://domain.com/directory/foaf.xrdf" />

<!-- provides contact information -->
<link rev="made" href="mailto:name@domain.com" title="contact name" />

<!-- indicates location of translated document -->
<link rel="alternate" href="http://domain.com/directory/translated.html" hreflang="fr" title="french translation" />

<!-- provides a link to the stylesheet -->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://domain.com/directory/style.css" type="text/css" media="screen" />

One Link to Open Them All

Posted on October 4, 2006 in Function by Jeff Starr

Welcome to Perishable Press! This article explains several methods for opening multiple frames with a single link. For more excellent (X)HTML information, check out the (X)HTML tag archive. If you like what you see, I encourage you to subscribe to Perishable Press for a periodic dose of online enlightenment ;)

Opening Multiple Frames with One Link

Method 1:

The first method of targeting multiple frames involves replacing either the entire frameset (via target="_top") or a subset of frames (via target="subset"). For example, any number of frames may be updated with a single link if that link targets a new frameset containing all of the new frames. Likewise, multiple frames within a nested frameset may be updated by replacing the nested frameset itself. This method works well when many frames need updating. In the following example, the nested frameset, "nested-frameset.html", contains multiple frames that need updating when a single link is clicked. When this happens, the "dynamic" frame is refreshed with multiple new frames, while the "static" frame remains constant. Using this method, virtually any combination of frames or framesets may be updated with a single link.

<frameset cols="*,3*">
   <frame src="static-content.html" name="static">
   <frame src="nested-frameset.html" name="dynamic">
</frameset>

Method 2:

The second method for targeting multiple frames employs JavaScript’s "onClick" function. With this method, the initial frame (or frameset) is updated via the link’s href attribute, while the additional frame(s)/frameset(s) is updated via the link’s onClick attribute. This method requires JavaScript, but is much less convoluted than the method previously discussed. In the following example, when the link is activated, "first-frame" will be updated with first-frame.html, while "second-frame" will be updated with second-frame.html:

<a href="/path/first-frame.html" 
 target="first-frame" title="Update frames" 
 onClick="top.second-frame.location='/path/second-frame.html';">
   Click here to update both frames.
</a>

Method 3:

Our third method of opening/updating multiple frames with a single click utilizes a simple JavaScript function. This method operates through a function call placed in either the href or onclick attribute of the anchor (<a>) element. Upon activation, the JavaScript function proceeds to open simultaneously the specified links. Implementing this technique is straightforward. Given the following frameset:

<html>
 <head>
  <title>The Frameset</title>
 </head>
 <frameset cols="50%,50%">
  <frame src="page-01.html" name="frame-one" />
  <frame src="page-02.html" name="frame-two" />
 </frameset>
</html>

…with the following code present in page-01.html, which is displayed as frame-one:

<html>
 <head>
  <title>Frame One</title>
  <script type="text/javascript">
   <!--//--><![CDATA[//><!--
    function openframes() {
       parent.frame-one.location="page-03.html";
       parent.frame-two.location="page-04.html";
    }
   //--><!]]>
  </script>
 </head>
 <body>
  <p>
   <a href="javascript:openframes();" title="Open two links..">
    Open "page-03.html" into "frame-one" and "page-04.html" into "frame-two"
   </a>
  </p>
 </body>
</html>

With the previous code in place, the broswer window will display two frames of equal width. In the left frame, there will be a link that, when clicked, will open two links at the same time. Specifically, when the link is clicked, a file named “page-03.html” will replace the contents of the left frame (”frame-one.html”) while a file named “page-04.html” will replace the contents of the right frame (”frame-two.html”). To setup additional frames to open/update upon link click, simply add the corresponding lines to the openframes() function by emulating the existing code pattern. For example, to add another three frames to the function:

function openframes() {
   parent.frame-one.location="page-03.html";
   parent.frame-two.location="page-04.html";
   parent.frame-thr.location="page-05.html";
   parent.frame-for.location="page-06.html";
   parent.frame-fiv.location="page-07.html";
}

Finally, to account for users without JavaScript, we could call the function via onclick attribute, include an alternate frameset or page via the href attribute, and throw in a return false declaration for good measure:

<a href="../no-javascript.html" onclick="javascript:openframes();return false;">
   Open "page-03.html" into "frame-one" and "page-04.html" into "frame-two"
</a>

Beyond frames..

Using the onClick attribute within links, it is possible to target more than just frames. For example, Monzilla’s Information theme for WordPress features subpanels that "pop" open to reveal various types of content. To improve usability, we wanted certain panel links to open their panels while simultaneously repositioning the top of the panel with the top of the browser. This was easily accomplished with an onClick attribute in each of the panel links1.

References

  • 1 To check out the "popping" subpanels used in the Information theme, click here, scroll down near the bottom of the page, and click on either the "nonsense" or "details +" tabs. The single link click should result in two events happening simultaneously: the subpanel will pop open and the subpanel will align its top edge with the top of the browser window.