Stuff and Content

I've covered two larger topics in other blog posts ( Admin interface users & Dashboards ) so in this post I'm going to cover a number of smaller suggestions I have for the Admin Interface refresh.  Some of the items have been suggested by others and been added to the specification - I hope I've noted these. Improve underlying HTML Damien has already mentioned linking labels with their related input via the for attribute.  I wasn't aware that there was already an issue for this but I made a start of adding a Accessibility & Usability Improvements project that currently " associates labels with specific form elements, adds "required" class to required input elements to allow attachment of javascript validation ". The project looked at "fixing" the datatype edit templates and the modifications can be viewed in the CHANGELOG . Specific changes I'd like to see in the underlying HTML are: Labels linked to input fields Lab...

I'm been meaning to attend a Web Directions Conference since they started but it always clashed with other commitments. This year I made the trip to Sydney for Web Directions South 08 and it was well worth it. Web Directions always provides a great program of both international and local speakers as well as a fantastic bunch of attendees. As with most conferences there were a number of parallel sessions and often the choice of which to attend is difficult. On the first day I attended mostly technical sessions, which in retrospect was probably a mistake. This is a run down on the sessions I attended on day one. New media - new business Lynne D Johnson presented the opening keynote which covered how various generations interact with of new technologies and what this means for traditional media providers. The content of the session was perhaps aimed at a less "online" savvy crowd but got interesting when examples and case studies came out. Some interesting ideas wher...

I've just uploaded a rating module to the contribution section on the eZ site. The Star Rating module introduces a datatype that can be added to any content classes to allow it to be rated. While I haven't checked the datatype has been designed so it should be possible to add multiple ratings to a single content class. The extension has been designed with accessibility in mind and will function without javascript, images or CSS. The catalyst for the extension was CSS star rating from Komodo Media and the extension contains CSS and images from this project. To add some web 2.0 goodness, if the xajax extension is enabled and the user has access ratings will be done via ajax calls. The xajax component requires newer versions (0.5+) of the xajax library so it must be downloaded from the projects site an not from the contributions section of the eZ site. View caching & dynamic content One of the issues I came across is that by making the rating a datatype, is that the d...

Nielson Norman Group (NNG) have released a free report (usually retails for $124 USD) into accessibility called: Beyond ALT Text:Making the Web Easy to Use for Users With Disabilities 75 Best Practices for Design of Websites and Intranets, Based on Usability Studies with People Who Use Assistive Technology 7mb PDF download available from the NNG group website at http://www.nngroup.com/reports /accessibility/ Pass on the good karma and make your sites more accessible over the holiday break! Note: The report is from 2001