Nick Cowie http://nickcowie.com Web standards, accessibility and such like with a bias toward Government web sites Thu, 18 Feb 2010 12:54:55 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Tra Vinh Special Vermicelli Soup Franki Nguyen recommended Tra Vinh to me last year and I made the long trek up William Street passed my current favourite Vietnamese Noodle House, Phong Vinh to Brisbane Streer to Tra Vinh.

]]> http://nickcowie.com/2010/tra-vinh-special-vermicelli-soup/ Quiet time here should be over soon It has been very quiet around here, for a number of reasons. I did expect my three week enforced rest to be spent learning and experimenting with the likes of CSS3 and HTML5 and then blogging about it. Instead I spent most of the time in the shed playing bicycle mechanic.

Once back at work, my usual blogging time on the train trip to and from work disappeared, as my MacBook Pro died and I started riding to work more often.

I need to start blogging on a more regular basis …

]]> http://nickcowie.com/2010/quiet-time-here-should-be-over-soon/ My chest filled to explode Apologies to David McComb. For those who do not follow my twitter feed, I will tell you what happened over the past few days.

I was riding to work on Friday morning, when I started having a pain in the chest …

]]> http://nickcowie.com/2009/my-chest-filled-to-explode/ RGBa backgrounds in IE RGBa is the new black, with support in most modern Safari 3, Firefox 3 and Opera 10, you can have semi transparent elements. Only there is no support currently in IE for RGBa.

However, you can easily fake it for backgrounds of block elements in IE with filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Gradient(GradientType=1, StartColorStr='#aaRRBBGG', EndColorStr='#aaRRBBGG); The filter gradient places a alpha channel colour gradient over the background. So as long the background is transparent, the start and end colours the same and the alpha (aa) channel a value greater than 0 (fully transparent) and FF (fully opaque), you get a block element in IE with a RGBa background. You can see an example of RGBa in action in IE …

]]> http://nickcowie.com/2009/rgba-backgrounds-in-ie/ Why use CSS Zen Garden for CSS3 demo For those who have not seen my Edge of the Web CSS3 demonstration I used the CSS Zen Garden HTML. Why, because I wanted to use somebody else's HTML, mainly because I wanted to show it works with any HTML and that most people would be familiar with the site.

I will not submit it, because Dave has not accepted any new submissions almost two year, my demo is far from the visual standard of most other design and I broke one major rule the CSS does not validate.

]]> http://nickcowie.com/2009/why-use-css-zen-garden-for-css3-demo/ CSS3 presentations at EOTW09 and WebJam11 I really enjoyed developing my presentation for Edge of the Web. The research and experimentation was a lot of fun. Explore the demo using CSS Zen Garden HTML and seriously try it in IE6, the WebJam presentation with some even more outrageous transitions needs Safari4 or FF3.7 and a little exploring with a mouse.

Progressive enhancement with CSS3
View more documents from Nick Cowie.

What I learnt is enough from probably a dozen blog posts, so hopefully I will be writing lot in the next few weeks.

]]> http://nickcowie.com/2009/css3-presentations-at-eotw09-and-webjam11/ The League of Moveable Type For those who have not seen my Edge of the Web CSS3 demonstration I used the CSS Zen Garden HTML. Why, because I wanted to use somebody else's HTML, mainly because I wanted to show it works with any HTML and that most people would be familiar with the site.

I will not submit it, because Dave has not accepted any new submissions almost two year, my demo is far from the visual standard of most other design and I broke one major rule the CSS does not validate.

]]> http://nickcowie.com/2009/the-league-of-moveable-type/ I am on the Edge of the Web Well I am speaking at the Edge of the Web Conference in Perth in November. The title Progressive Enhancement with CSS: Or how I stopped worrying about IE6 and starting loving CSS3.

The aim is to show how you can use CSS2 and CSS3 to improve the experience of visitors using modern browsers, while not blocking access to those people still using older browsers like IE6 …

]]> http://nickcowie.com/2009/i-am-on-the-edge-of-the-web/ Cleaning up Word HTML If you are like me, on occasions you have people want to paste directly from Word into CMS or Wordpress. I was bemoaning the fact, that you either end up with Word HTML or lose all the formatting, when a colleague of mine, Steven Miles suggest I use JavaScript to clean up the HTML and provide the some code.

So this is what I created to clean up Word HTML, you paste the HTML is to the editable div, hit the button and if you are using Internet Explorer the converted HTML is copied to your clipboard. So you can paste the clean HTML (note it is HTML code) straight into the CMS editor in HTML mode …

*** does not currently work in IE8, I need to investigate further ***

]]> http://nickcowie.com/2009/cleaning-up-word-html/ It is 2009 and some people still do not get accessibility At the Gov2.0 taskforce roadshow I ended up in conversation with a representative of one Department bemoaning the fact the Government will not give them extra money to make their websites WCAG 1.0 level 2 compliant.

]]> http://nickcowie.com/2009/it-is-2009-and-some-people-still-do-not-get-accessibility/