Sneaky semanticness (?!)

Neat separation of style (clickable images) from content (text links) from SimpleBits ... useful to know about IE's flickering issues when <a> tags are involved!

Simplifying DHTML design with good CSS

Stuff and Nonsense has a nice article using the DOM to simplify forms ... cool, but his JavaScript loops over form elements to set their display property to show/hide them (which everyone does, is simple to code/understand but is a tad inelegant!) Serendipitously (!) Sitepoint has a companion article that subtly uses CSS's descendant selectors (also known as contextual selectors e.g. in the W3C CSS 1 spec)so that all the JavaScript needs to do is change one class ... the form takes a "hide the optional bits" class which does nothing to it ;-) but the optional elements disappear due to a rule with a descendant selector rooted in the form's "hide optional" class ... excellent synergy! Using classes is such a better idea than manipulating element's style properties directly as -- ta da! -- it can be soooo easily adapted for media stylesheets, starting with print and moving on to anything! Nice one...

Great revolutionary Scott!

I and my colleagues do live in interesting times ... The Vice Chancellor (read: leader of the University) has decided to restructure. At the same time has commissioned a review of computing teaching in the Uni. There are 4 'units' doing it: us "Scientific Computing" and "Media Technology" in the Faculty of Science, "CIS" in the Faculty of Technology and "Business I.T." in the Faculty of Business. So we hire a no-doubt expensive external consultant to consider the situation. In my group's meeting he mentions how difficult it is to find out where a particular IT-related course will be taught (e.g. not evident from our web site!) so we can see where the wind's blowing ... And then, lo! and behold!, after a period of FUD where all sorts of radical restructuring proposals are rumoured, we learn that the University executive group has settled on the not-so-radical merging of "Scientific Computing" and "CIS" into a new Faculty, leaving "Media Tech." behind and "BIT" as it is! Not so radical and still leaves the computing fragmented ... what a pointless waste of everybody's time! (Oh, there are some other proposed changes, but the gossip says they're waiting on agreements with other organisations) And in case you're wondering about the title: The V-C's name is Professor Scott... Changes to be in place by 1^st July 2005?!

Accessibility

A collection (maybe, eventually....) of links to web/accessibility articles:

• 10 Accessibility Blunders of the Big Players
• Accessible, stylish form layout

Floating thumbnails

HTML forms ... accessible warts'n'all

The Man In Blue has a great tutorial styling accessible HTML forms here.

Straight eye for the straight guy :-)

"Hey, mate. Want a beer?" "Sure!" "You see what Barry was wearing?" "No, mate. Didn't notice ... Nice fridge." (From The Fishbowl) <grin>

Collaborative "Open Textbook"

Interesting idea ... restricted to (at present) Math content. Uses CVS and T_EX which is kinda techie!

Mobile platforms for e-learning

Only yesterday we were discussing encouraging student involvement (they don't read their emails!) by targetting students' preferred platform (they do read their SMS!) and today I read a serendipitous & neat post: Mobile CSS is a Reality - HTML Dog Blog. So we can begin to write useful tools for the latest PDA/smartphones that I'm confident students will be buying to keep up with the (student) Jones'! Now gotta encourage the manufacturers of our LMS (Blackboard) to get rid of frames (!) and give us media style sheets <grin> ... call me back in a few years!

Update Knock me down with a feather ... our LMS support are testing Blackboard on small format devices <grin> gotta get me some of that!

Google it!

<grin> I simply must remember this for next year when students start asking me the usual dumbass questions-without-thought. My standard response might then be to say Fucking Google It! (via incorporated subversion).