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Start helping the web by coding properly and removing barriers.
"Anyone who slaps a ‘this page is best viewed with Browser X’ label on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on another computer, another word processor, or another network." - Sir Tim Berners-Lee
Cross everything - Browser, Platform, Device
Write once, deliver everywhere
Question...
Why do sites break?
Case Study: Korea
It began in 1998, when it did not wait for SSL to be standardized (SSL later became standardized in 1999)
Commissioned an ActiveX control for secure web transactions
ActiveX only works with Internet Explorer (and now, kinda through Firefox)
This meant anyone on Mac or Linux could not use Bank and E-Commerce sites
Almost all sites designed to just work in Internet Explorer, and break in some way or another other browsers
Also, when vista was released, it introduced tighter restrictions on ActiveX, which lead many sites failing in it
Such a big problem, that the government advised citizens not to install Vista
Build to standards, and adapt for legacy browsers.
Question...
How are sites inaccessible?
WCAG 2.0 Guidline section 4.1
Maximize compatibility with current and future user agents, including assistive technologies
Indian sites: Common pitfalls
Browser Sniffing
Designing for only IE, or at most netscape(!)
Ignoring people who use other browsers or operating systems
'Best viewed with...' message
Common examples: BSNL, Indian Railways
WCAG 2.0 Guidline section 3.1
Make text content readable and understandable
Indian sites: Common pitfalls
Fonts with regional websites
many use EOT, which only works with IE
Some regional sites actually have image files in which they have written in regional fonts!
Slowly sites are changing though, and many have switched to UTF-8 (Kudos Aajtak.com!)
Example: Nava Bharat Times, Rajasthan Patrika
Other points
1.1: Provide text alternatives for any non-text content so that it can be changed into other forms people need, such as large print, braille, speech, symbols or simpler language
2.2 Enough Time: Provide users enough time to read and use content
2.3 Do not design content in a way that is known to cause seizures
Indian sites: Common pitfalls
Paying only lip service to XHTML. (Reddif.com had almost 1600 errors. Claims to be XHTML 1.0 Transitional)
Lack of textual description of non-textual data (For example ALT text)
Marquees are less common. Older sites still have them though
Lack of maturity and respect for end user: Excessive popups and intrusive ads, including vigorously blinking ones
Common example: Almost every major indian portal! For marquess: Almost every major indian government site. We did find one pausable marquee at the DRDO website though. Yay!
Test on engines, not browsers
Browser Layout Engines
Presto: Opera Desktop, Opera Mini, Opera Mobile, Nintendo DSi, Wii Internet Channel
Trident: Internet Explorer, Maxthon, Avant Browser
Gecko: Mozilla Firefox, Flock, K-Meleon, Camino, Seamonkey
Webkit/KHTML: Apple Safari, Google Chrome, Epiphany
Where to learn more?
Opera Web Standards Curriculum
In collaboration with Yahoo!
A whole curriculum detailing the right way to code on the web
Each chapter written by an industry stalwart
Licensed under creative commons, so any university can use it in their own course