{"rowid": 121, "title": "Hide And Seek in The Head", "contents": "If you want your JavaScript-enhanced pages to remain accessible and understandable to scripted and noscript users alike, you have to think before you code. Which functionalities are required (ie. should work without JavaScript)? Which ones are merely nice-to-have (ie. can be scripted)? You should only start creating the site when you\u2019ve taken these decisions.\n\nSpecial HTML elements\n\nOnce you have a clear idea of what will work with and without JavaScript, you\u2019ll likely find that you need a few HTML elements for the noscript version only.\n\nTake this example: A form has a nifty bit of Ajax that automatically and silently sends a request once the user enters something in a form field. However, in order to preserve accessibility, the user should also be able to submit the form normally. So the form should have a submit button in noscript browsers, but not when the browser supports sufficient JavaScript.\n\nSince the button is meant for noscript browsers, it must be hard-coded in the HTML:\n\n\n\nWhen JavaScript is supported, it should be removed:\n\nvar checkJS = [check JavaScript support];\nwindow.onload = function () {\n\tif (!checkJS) return;\n\tdocument.getElementById('noScriptButton').style.display = 'none';\n}\n\nProblem: the load event\n\nAlthough this will likely work fine in your testing environment, it\u2019s not completely correct. What if a user with a modern, JavaScript-capable browser visits your page, but has to wait for a huge graphic to load? The load event fires only after all assets, including images, have been loaded. So this user will first see a submit button, but then all of a sudden it\u2019s removed. That\u2019s potentially confusing.\n\nFortunately there\u2019s a simple solution: play a bit of hide and seek in the :\n\nvar checkJS = [check JavaScript support];\nif (checkJS) {\n\tdocument.write('');\n}\n\nFirst, check if the browser supports enough JavaScript. If it does, document.write an extra \n\nSo we end up with a nice simple to understand but also quick to write XSL which can be used on ATOM Flickr feeds and ATOM News feeds. With a little playing around with XSL, you can make XML beautiful again.\n\nAll the files can be found in the zip file (14k)", "year": "2006", "author": "Ian Forrester", "author_slug": "ianforrester", "published": "2006-12-07T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2006/beautiful-xml-with-xsl/", "topic": "code"}
{"rowid": 137, "title": "Cheating Color", "contents": "Have you ever been strapped to use specific colors outlined in a branding guide? Felt restricted because those colors ended up being too light or dark for the way you want to use them?\n\nHere\u2019s the solution: throw out your brand guide.\n\ngasp!\n\nOK, don\u2019t throw it out. Just put it in a drawer for a few minutes.\n\nBranding Guides be Damned\n\nWhen dealing with color on screen, it\u2019s easy to get caught up in literal values from hex colors, you can cheat colors ever so slightly to achieve the right optical value. This is especially prevalent when trying to bring a company\u2019s identity colors to a screen design. Because the most important idea behind a brand guide is to help a company maintain the visual integrity of their business, consider hex numbers to be guidelines rather than law. Once you are familiar enough with the colors your company uses, you can start to flex them a bit, and take a few liberties.\n\nThis is a quick method for cheating to get the color you really want. With a little sleight of design, we can swap a color that might be part of your identity guidelines, with one that works better optically, and no one will be the wiser!\n\nColor is a Wily Beast\n\nThis might be hard: You might have to break out of the idea that a color can only be made using one method. Color is fluid. It interacts and changes based on its surroundings. Some colors can appear lighter or darker based on what color they appear on or next to. The RGB gamut is additive color, and as such, has a tendency to push contrast in the direction that objects may already be leaning\u2014increasing the contrast of light colors on dark colors and decreasing the contrast of light on light. Obviously, because we are talking about monitors here, these aren\u2019t hard and fast rules.\n\nCheat and Feel Good About It\n\nOn a light background, when you have a large element of a light color, a small element of the same color will appear lighter.\n\nEnter our fake company: Double Dagger. They manufacture footnotes. Take a look at Fig. 1 below. The logo (Double Dagger), rule, and small text are all #6699CC. Because the logo so large, we get a good sense of the light blue color. Unfortunately, the rule and small text beneath it feel much lighter because we can\u2019t create enough contrast with such small shapes in that color.\n\nNow take a look at Fig. 2. Our logo is still #6699CC, but now the rule and smaller text have been cheated to #4477BB, effectively giving us the same optical color that we used in the logo. You will find that we get a better sense of the light blue, and the added benefit of more contrast for our text. Doesn\u2019t that feel good?\n\n\n\nConversely, when you have a large element of a dark color, a small element of the same color will appear darker.\n\nLet\u2019s look at Fig. 3 below. Double Dagger has decided to change its identity colors from blue to red. In Fig. 3, our logo, rule, and small text are all #330000, a very dark red. If you look at the rule and small text below the logo, you will notice that they seem dark enough to be confused with black. The dark red can\u2019t be sustained by the smaller shapes. Now let\u2019s look at Fig. 4. The logo is still #33000, but we\u2019ve now cheated the rule and smaller text to #550000. This gives us a better sense of a red, but preserves the dark and moody direction the company has taken.\n\n\n\nBut we\u2019ve only touched on color against a white background. For colors against a darker background, you may find lighter colors work fine, but darker colors need to be cheated a bit to the lighter side in order to reach a good optical equivalent. Take a look below at Fig. 5 and Fig. 6. Both use the same exact corresponding colors as Fig. 1 and Fig. 2 above, but now they are set against a dark background. Where the blue used in Fig. 1 above was too light for the smaller elements, we find it is just right for them in Fig. 5, and the darker blue we used in Fig. 2 has now proven too dark for a dark background, as evidenced in Fig. 6.\n\n\n\nYour mileage may vary, and this may not be applicable in all situations, but consider it to be just another tool on your utility belt for dealing with color problems.", "year": "2006", "author": "Jason Santa Maria", "author_slug": "jasonsantamaria", "published": "2006-12-23T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2006/cheating-color/", "topic": "design"}
{"rowid": 138, "title": "Rounded Corner Boxes the CSS3 Way", "contents": "If you\u2019ve been doing CSS for a while you\u2019ll know that there are approximately 3,762 ways to create a rounded corner box. The simplest techniques rely on the addition of extra mark-up directly to your page, while the more complicated ones add the mark-up though DOM manipulation. While these techniques are all very interesting, they do seem somewhat of a kludge. The goal of CSS is to separate structure from presentation, yet here we are adding superfluous mark-up to our code in order to create a visual effect. The reason we are doing this is simple. CSS2.1 only allows a single background image per element.\n\nThankfully this looks set to change with the addition of multiple background images into the CSS3 specification. With CSS3 you\u2019ll be able to add not one, not four, but eight background images to a single element. This means you\u2019ll be able to create all kinds of interesting effects without the need of those additional elements.\n\nWhile the CSS working group still seem to be arguing over the exact syntax, Dave Hyatt went ahead and implemented the currently suggested mechanism into Safari. The technique is fiendishly simple, and I think we\u2019ll all be a lot better off once the W3C stop arguing over the details and allow browser vendors to get on and provide the tools we need to build better websites.\n\nTo create a CSS3 rounded corner box, simply start with your box element and apply your 4 corner images, separated by commas.\n\n.box {\n\tbackground-image: url(top-left.gif), url(top-right.gif), url(bottom-left.gif), url(bottom-right.gif);\n}\n\nWe don\u2019t want these background images to repeat, which is the normal behaviour, so lets set all their background-repeat properties to no-repeat.\n\n.box {\n\tbackground-image: url(top-left.gif), url(top-right.gif), url(bottom-left.gif), url(bottom-right.gif);\n\tbackground-repeat: no-repeat, no-repeat, no-repeat, no-repeat;\n}\n\nLastly, we need to define the positioning of each corner image.\n\n.box {\n\tbackground-image: url(top-left.gif), url(top-right.gif), url(bottom-left.gif), url(bottom-right.gif);\n\tbackground-repeat: no-repeat, no-repeat, no-repeat, no-repeat;\n\tbackground-position: top left, top right, bottom left, bottom right;\n}\n\nAnd there we have it, a simple rounded corner box with no additional mark-up.\n\nAs well as using multiple background images, CSS3 also has the ability to create rounded corners without the need of any images at all. You can do this by setting the border-radius property to your desired value as seen in the next example.\n\n.box {\n\tborder-radius: 1.6em;\n}\n\nThis technique currently works in Firefox/Camino and creates a nice, if somewhat jagged rounded corner. If you want to create a box that works in both Mozilla and WebKit based browsers, why not combine both techniques and see what happens.", "year": "2006", "author": "Andy Budd", "author_slug": "andybudd", "published": "2006-12-04T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2006/rounded-corner-boxes-the-css3-way/", "topic": "code"}
{"rowid": 139, "title": "Flickr Photos On Demand with getFlickr", "contents": "In case you don\u2019t know it yet, Flickr is great. It is a lot of fun to upload, tag and caption photos and it is really handy to get a vast network of contacts through it. \n\nUsing Flickr photos outside of it is a bit of a problem though. There is a Flickr API, and you can get almost every page as an RSS feed, but in general it is a bit tricky to use Flickr photos inside your blog posts or web sites. You might not want to get into the whole API game or use a server side proxy script as you cannot retrieve RSS with Ajax because of the cross-domain security settings.\n\nHowever, Flickr also provides an undocumented JSON output, that can be used to hack your own solutions in JavaScript without having to use a server side script.\n\n\n\tIf you enter the URL http://flickr.com/photos/tags/panda you get to the flickr page with photos tagged \u201cpanda\u201d.\n\tIf you enter the URL http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?tags=panda&format=rss_200 you get the same page as an RSS feed.\n\tIf you enter the URL http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?tags=panda&format=json you get a JavaScript function called jsonFlickrFeed with a parameter that contains the same data in JSON format\n\n\nYou can use this to easily hack together your own output by just providing a function with the same name. I wanted to make it easier for you, which is why I created the helper getFlickr for you to download and use.\n\ngetFlickr for Non-Scripters\n\nSimply include the javascript file getflickr.js and the style getflickr.css in the head of your document:\n\n\n\n\nOnce this is done you can add links to Flickr pages anywhere in your document, and when you give them the CSS class getflickrphotos they get turned into gallery links. When a visitor clicks these links they turn into loading messages and show a \u201cpopup\u201d gallery with the connected photos once they were loaded. As the JSON returned is very small it won\u2019t take long. You can close the gallery, or click any of the thumbnails to view a photo. Clicking the photo makes it disappear and go back to the thumbnails.\n\nCheck out the example page and click the different gallery links to see the results.\n\nNotice that getFlickr works with Unobtrusive JavaScript as when scripting is disabled the links still get to the photos on Flickr.\n\ngetFlickr for JavaScript Hackers\n\nIf you want to use getFlickr with your own JavaScripts you can use its main method leech():\n\ngetFlickr.leech(sTag, sCallback);\n\n \n\tsTag\n\tthe tag you are looking for\n\tsCallback\n\tan optional function to call when the data was retrieved.\n \n\nAfter you called the leech() method you have two strings to use:\n\n \n\tgetFlickr.html[sTag]\n\tcontains an HTML list (without the outer UL element) of all the images linked to the correct pages at flickr. The images are the medium size, you can easily change that by replacing _m.jpg with _s.jpg for thumbnails.\n\tgetFlickr.tags[sTag]\n\tcontains a string of all the other tags flickr users added with the tag you searched for(space separated)\n \n\nYou can call getFlickr.leech() several times when the page has loaded to cache several result feeds before the page gets loaded. This\u2019ll make the photos quicker for the end user to show up. If you want to offer a form for people to search for flickr photos and display them immediately you can use the following HTML:\n\n\n\nAll the JavaScript you\u2019ll need (for a basic display) is this:\n\nfunction populate(){\n var tag = document.getElementById('tag').value;\n document.getElementById('photos').innerHTML = getFlickr.html[tag].replace(/_m\\.jpg/g,'_s.jpg');\n document.getElementById('tags').innerHTML = getFlickr.tags[tag];\n return false;\n}\n\nEasy as pie, enjoy!\n\nCheck out the example page and try the form to see the results.", "year": "2006", "author": "Christian Heilmann", "author_slug": "chrisheilmann", "published": "2006-12-03T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2006/flickr-photos-on-demand/", "topic": "code"}
{"rowid": 140, "title": "Styling hCards with CSS", "contents": "There are plenty of places online where you can learn about using the hCard microformat to mark up contact details at your site (there are some resources at the end of the article). But there\u2019s not yet been a lot of focus on using microformats with CSS. So in this installment of 24 ways, we\u2019re going to look at just that \u2013 how microformats help make CSS based styling simpler and more logical.\n\nBeing rich, quite complex structures, hCards provide designers with a sophisticated scaffolding for styling them. A recent example of styling hCards I saw, playing on the business card metaphor, was by Andy Hume, at http://thedredge.org/2005/06/using-hcards-in-your-blog/. While his approach uses fixed width cards, let\u2019s take a look at how we might style a variable width business card style for our hCards.\n\nLet\u2019s take a common hCard, which includes address, telephone and email details\n\n
\n\n\t\n\t\t 1485 Laperri\u00e8re Avenue \n\t\t Ottawa ON K1Z 7S8 \n\t\tCanada\n\t\n\n\t\n\t\tPhone/Fax: Work: 61 2 9365 5007\n\t\tEmail: info@webdirections.org\n\t\n\n\nWe\u2019ll be using a variation on the now well established \u201csliding doors\u201d technique (if you create a CSS technique, remember it\u2019s very important to give it a memorable name or acronym, and bonus points if you get your name in there!) by Douglas Bowman, enhanced by Scott Schiller (see http://www.schillmania.com/projects/dialog/,) which will give us a design which looks like this\n\n\n\nThe technique, in a nutshell, uses background images on four elements, two at the top, and two at the bottom, to add each rounded corner.\n\nWe are going to make this design \u201cfluid\u201d in the sense that it grows and shrinks in proportion with the size of the font that the text of the element is displayed with. This is sometimes referred to as an \u201cem driven design\u201d (we\u2019ll see why in a moment).\n\nTo see how this works in practice, here\u2019s the same design with the text \u201czoomed\u201d up in size\n\n\n\nand the same design again, when we zoom the text size down\n\n\n\nBy the way, the hCard image comes from Chris Messina, and you can download it and other microformat icons from the microformats wiki.\n\nNow, with CSS3, this whole task would be considerably easier, because we can add multiple background images to an element, and border images for each edge of an element. Safari, version 1.3 up, actually supports multiple background images, but sadly, it\u2019s not supported in Firefox 1.5, or even Firefox 2.0 (let\u2019s not mention IE7 eh?). So it\u2019s probably too little supported to use now. So instead we\u2019ll use a technique that only involves CSS2, and works in pretty much any browser.\n\nVery often, developers add div or span elements as containers for these background images, and in fact, if you visit Scott Shiller\u2019s site, that\u2019s what he has done there. But if at all possible we shouldn\u2019t be adding any HTML simply for presentational purposes, even if the presentation is done via CSS. What we can do is to use the HTML we have already, as much as is possible, to add the style we want. This can take some creative thinking, but once you get the hang of this approach it becomes a more natural way of using HTML compared with simply adding divs and spans at will as hooks for style. Of course, this technique isn\u2019t always simple, and in fact sometimes simply not possible, requiring us to add just a little HTML to provide the \u201chooks\u201d for CSS.\n\nLet\u2019s go to work\n\nThe first step is to add a background image to the whole vCard element.\n\n\n\nWe make this wide enough (for example 1000 or more pixels) and tall enough that no matter how large the content of the vCard grows, it will never overflow this area. We can\u2019t simply repeat the image, because the top left corner will show when the image repeats.\n\nWe add this as the background image of the vCard element using CSS.\n\nWhile we are at it, let\u2019s give the text a sans-serif font, some color so that it will be visible, and stop the image repeating.\n\n.vcard {\n\tbackground-image: url(images/vcardfill.png);\n\tbackground-repeat: no-repeat;\n\tcolor: #666;\n\tfont-family: \"Lucida Grande\", Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;\n}\n\nWhich in a browser, will look something like this.\n\n\n\nNext step we need to add the top right hand corner of the hCard. In keeping with our aim of not adding HTML simply for styling purposes, we want to use the existing structure of the page where possible. Here, we\u2019ll use the paragraph of class fn and org, which is the first child element of the vcard element.\n\n
Web Directions Conference Pty Ltd
\n\nHere\u2019s our CSS for this element\n\n.fn {\n\tbackground-image: url(images/topright.png);\n\tbackground-repeat: no-repeat;\n\tbackground-position: top right;\n\tpadding-top: 2em;\n\tfont-weight: bold;\n\tfont-size: 1.1em;\n}\n\nAgain, we don\u2019t want it to repeat, but this time, we\u2019ve specified a background position for the image. This will make the background image start from the top, but its right edge will be located at the right edge of the element. I also made the font size a little bigger, and the weight bold, to differentiate it from the rest of the text in the hCard.\n\nHere\u2019s the image we are adding as the background to this element.\n\n\n\nSo, putting these two CSS statements together we get\n\n\n\nWe specified a padding-top of 2em to give some space between the content of the fn element and the edge of the fn element. Otherwise the top of the hCard image would be hard against the border. To see this in action, just remove the padding-top: 2em; declaration and preview in a browser.\n\nSo, with just two statements, we are well under way. We\u2019ve not even had to add any HTML so far. Let\u2019s turn to the bottom of the element, and add the bottom border (well, the background image which will serve as that border).\n\nNow, which element are we going to use to add this background image to?\n\nOK, here I have to admit to a little, teensie bit of cheating. If you look at the HTML of the hCard, I\u2019ve grouped the email and telephone properties into a div, with a class of telecommunications. This grouping is not strictly requred for our hCard.\n\n
\n\nNow, I chose that class name because that is what the vCard specification calls this group of properties. And typically, I do tend to group together related elements using divs when I mark up content. I find it makes the page structure more logical and readable. But strictly speaking, this isn\u2019t necessary, so you may consider it cheating. But my lesson in this would be, if you are going to add markup, try to make it as meaningful as possible.\n\nAs you have probably guessed by now, we are going to add one part of the bottom border image to this element. We\u2019re going to add this image as the background-image.\n\n\n\nAgain, it will be a very wide image, like the top left one, so that no matter how wide the element might get, the background image will still be wide enough. Now, we\u2019ll need to make this image sit in the bottom left of the element we attach it to, so we use a backgound position of left bottom (we put the horizontal position before the vertical). Here\u2019s our CSS statement for this\n\n.telecommunications {\n\tbackground-image: url(images/bottom-left.png);\n\tbackground-repeat: no-repeat;\n\tbackground-position: left bottom;\n\tmargin-bottom: 2em;\n}\n\nAnd that will look like this\n\n\n\nNot quite there, but well on the way. Time for the final piece in the puzzle.\n\nOK, I admit, I might have cheated just a little bit more in this step. But like the previous step, all valid, and (hopefully) quite justifiable markup. If we look at the HTML again, you\u2019ll find that our email address is marked up like this\n\n
\n\nUnfortunately, that is one of the worst examples of tag cloud markup I have ever seen. The page states that a tag cloud is a list of tags where size reflects popularity. However, despite describing it in this way to the human readers, the page\u2019s author hasn\u2019t described it that way in the markup. It isn\u2019t a list of tags, just a bunch of anchors in a
. This is also inaccessible because a screenreader will not pause between adjacent links, and in some configurations will not announce the individual links, but rather all of the tags will be read as just one link containing a whole bunch of words. Markup crime number one. \n\nFlickr \n\nAh, Flickr. The darling photo sharing site of the internet, and the biggest blind spot in every standardista\u2019s vision. Forgive it for having atrocious markup and sometimes confusing UI because it\u2019s just so much damn fun to use. Let\u2019s see what they do. \n\n
\n\nAgain we have a simple collection of anchors like del.icio.us, only this time in a paragraph. But rather than using a class to represent the size of the tag they use an inline style. An inline style using a pixel-based font size. That\u2019s so far away from the goal of separating style from content, they might as well use a tag. You could theoretically parse that to extract the information, but you have more work to guess what the pixel sizes represent. Markup crime number two (and extra jail time for using non-breaking spaces purely for visual spacing purposes.)\n\nTechnorati \n\nAh, now. Here, you\u2019d expect something decent. After all, the Overlord of microformats and King of Semantics Tantek \u00c7elik works there. Surely we\u2019ll see something decent here? \n\n\n\t
\n\t...\n\n\nUnfortunately it turns out not to be that decent, and stop calling me Shirley. It\u2019s not exactly terrible code. It does recognise that a tag cloud is a list of links. And, since they\u2019re in alphabetical order, that it\u2019s an ordered list of links. That\u2019s nice. However \u2026 fifteen nested tags? FIFTEEN? That\u2019s emphasis for you. Yes, it is parse-able, but it\u2019s also something of a strange way of looking at emphasis. The HTML spec states that is emphasis, and is for stronger emphasis. Nesting tags seems counter to the idea that different tags are used for different levels of emphasis. Plus, if you had a screen reader that stressed the voice for emphasis, what would it do? Shout at you? Markup crime number three. \n\nSo what should it be? \n\nAs del.icio.us tells us, a tag cloud is a list of tags where the size that they are rendered at contains extra information. However, by hiding the extra context purely within the CSS or the HTML tags used, you are denying that context to some users. The basic assumption being made is that all users will be able to see the difference between font sizes, and this is demonstrably false. \n\nA better way to code a tag cloud is to put the context of the cloud within the content, not the markup or CSS alone. As an example, I\u2019m going to take some of my favourite flickr tags and put them into a cloud which communicates the relative frequency of each tag. \n\nTo start with a tag cloud in its most basic form is just a list of links. I am going to present them in alphabetical order, so I\u2019ll use an ordered list. Into each list item I add the number of photos I have with that particular tag. The tag itself is linked to the page on flickr which contains those photos. So we end up with this first example. To display this as a traditional tag cloud, we need to alter it in a few ways: \n\n\n\tThe items need to be displayed next to each other, rather than one-per-line\n\tThe context information should be hidden from display (but not from screen readers)\n\tThe tag should link to the page of items with that tag\n\n\nDisplaying the items next to each other simply means setting the display of the list elements to inline. The context can be hidden by wrapping it in a and then using the off-left method to hide it. And the link just means adding an anchor (with rel=\"tag\" for some extra microformats bonus points). So, now we have a simple collection of links in our second example. \n\nThe last stage is to add the sizes. Since we already have context in our content, the size is purely for visual rendering, so we can just use classes to define the different sizes. For my example, I\u2019ll use a range of class names from not-popular through ultra-popular, in order of smallest to largest, and then use CSS to define different font sizes. If you preferred, you could always use less verbose class names such as size1 through size6. Anyway, adding some classes and CSS gives us our final example, a semantic and more accessible tag cloud.", "year": "2006", "author": "Mark Norman Francis", "author_slug": "marknormanfrancis", "published": "2006-12-09T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2006/marking-up-a-tag-cloud/", "topic": "code"}
{"rowid": 144, "title": "The Mobile Web, Simplified", "contents": "A note from the editors: although eye-opening in 2006, this article is no longer relevant to today\u2019s mobile web.\n \n \n \n Considering a foray into mobile web development? Following are four things you need to know before making the leap.\n\n1. 4 billion mobile subscribers expected by 2010\n\nFancy that. Coupled with the UN prediction of 6.8 billion humans by 2010, 4 billion mobile subscribers (source) is an astounding 59% of the planet. Just how many of those subscribers will have data plans and web-enabled phones is still in question, but inevitably this all means one thing for you and me: A ton of potential eyes to view our web content on a mobile device.\n\n2. Context is king\n\nYour content is of little value to users if it ignores the context in which it is viewed. Consider how you access data on your mobile device. You might be holding a bottle of water or gripping a handle on the subway/tube. You\u2019re probably seeking specific data such as directions or show times, rather than the plethora of data at your disposal via a desktop PC.\n\nThe mobile web, a phrase often used to indicate \u201caccessing the web on a mobile device\u201d, is very much a context-, content-, and component-specific environment. Expressed in terms of your potential target audience, access to web content on a mobile device is largely influenced by surrounding circumstances and conditions, information relevant to being mobile, and the feature set of the device being used. Ask yourself, What is relevant to my users and the tasks, problems, and needs they may encounter while being mobile? Answer that question and you\u2019ll be off to a great start.\n\n3. WAP 2.0 is an XHTML environment\n\nIn a nutshell, here are a few fundamental tenets of mobile internet technology:\n\n\n\tWireless Application Protocol (WAP) is the protocol for enabling mobile access to internet content.\n\tWireless Markup Language (WML) was the language of choice for WAP 1.0.\n\tNearly all devices sold today are WAP 2.0 devices.\n\tWith the introduction of WAP 2.0, XHTML Mobile Profile (XHTML-MP) became the preferred markup language.\n\tXHTML-MP will be familiar to anyone experienced with XHTML Transitional or Strict.\n\n\nSummary? The mobile web is rapidly becoming an XHTML environment, and thus you and I can apply our existing \u201cdesktop web\u201d skills to understand how to develop content for it. With WML on the decline, the learning curve is much smaller today than it was several years ago. I\u2019m generalizing things gratuitously, but the point remains: Get off yo\u2019 lazy butt and begin to take mobile seriously.\n\nI\u2019ll even pass you a few tips for getting started. First, the DOCTYPE for XHTML-MP is as follows:\n\n\n\nAs for MIME type, Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) specifies using the MIME type application/vnd.wap.xhtml+xml, but ultimately you need to ensure the server delivering your mobile content is configured properly for the MIME type you choose to use, as there are other options (see Setting up WAP Servers).\n\nOnce you\u2019ve made it to the body, the XHTML-MP markup is not unlike what you\u2019re already used to. A few resources worth skimming:\n\n\n\tDevelopers Home XHTML-MP Tutorial \u2013 An impressively replete resource for all things XHTML-MP\n\tXHTML-MP Tags List \u2013 A complete list of XHTML-MP elements and accompanying attributes\n\n\nAnd last but certainly not least, CSS. There exists WAP CSS, which is essentially a subset of CSS2 with WAP-specific extensions. For all intents and purposes, much of the CSS you\u2019re already comfortable using will be transferrable to mobile. As for including CSS in your pages, your options are the same as for desktop sites: external, embedded, and inline. Some experts will argue embedded or inline over external in favor of reducing the number of HTTP connections per page request, yet many popular mobilized sites and apps employ external linking without issue.\n\nStocking stuffers: Flickr Mobile, Fandango Mobile, and Popurls Mobile. A few sites with whom you can do the View Source song and dance for further study.\n\n4. \u201cCell phone\u201d is so DynaTAC\n\nIf you\u2019re a U.S. resident, listen up: You must rid your vocabulary of the term \u201ccell phone\u201d. We\u2019re one of the few economies on the planet to refer to a mobile phone accordingly. If you care to find yourself in any of the worthwhile mobile development circles, begin using terms more widely accepted: \u201cmobile\u201d or \u201cmobile phone\u201d or \u201chandset\u201d or \u201chandy\u201d. If you\u2019re not sure which, go for \u201cmobile\u201d. Such as, \u201cYo dog, check out my new mobile.\u201d\n\nMore importantly, however, is overcoming the mentality that access to the mobile web can be done only with a phone. Instead, \u201cdevice\u201d encourages us to think phone, handheld computer, watch, Nintendo DS, car, you name it.\n\nSimple enough?", "year": "2006", "author": "Cameron Moll", "author_slug": "cameronmoll", "published": "2006-12-19T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2006/the-mobile-web-simplified/", "topic": "ux"}
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