Accessible Information Solutions - Colour Contrast Analyser

National Information and Library Service (NILS) made a little windows app that runs selected (or manual input) HEX values through the W3C's color brightness and color difference algorithms. Given my usual lack of subtleness I don't generally run into this problem, but I have a freelance client especially concerned with readability, so it'll be nice to have a tool to back up my work.

Access Matters

A SimpleQuiz variation, with real world accessibility application questions. The structure is based on the guidelines, and the answers look like they're going to take actual screen reader behavior into account.

'A New Bunny'

shove this up your pipe and smoke it Bugs. so heavily censored, when phrases like "sodomizing" and "man yogurt" come through un-bleeped they're hilarious. a perfect example of the ridiculousness of the 7 dirty words.

Joshuaink: Creating a site schematic

starting on a new freelance project, i'll be doing a site schematic this weekend. looks like i've got some further reading to do, not sure i like the example he gave, feels overly-designed and has way too many criss-crossing lines.

Printable trail maps

LA Times trail maps. Thanks Josh.

Planearium

version 2 of the south park generator. we used the first one to make advoy park, but jon and i had to do some photoshop/fireworks touch up.

ObjectGraph Dictionary

and here's a working demo based on Google Suggest with code that looks readily picked apart.

Chris Justus - Server Side Guy: Google Suggest Dissected...

here it is. he re-wrote it, un-compressing the indentation and re-factoring all the variable/function names. now we've just gotta integrate it with the app.

Life With Alacrity: Google Suggest Dissected

we're going to have to do something like this for an interface at work, the list of people is just too long to handle otherwise. haven't read it yet and i'm just about out the door, but it looks like this blog entry has good links to how google suggest works.

Hanzi Smatter

Dedicated to the misuse of Chinese characters (Hanzi or Kanji) in Western culture. Note to self: send in picture of grayscale gradient shirt. The calligraphy is too abstract for Sarah here at work to read.

The Fade Anything Technique

I haven't explored the code yet, josh says it requires elements to have an id as well as a class which seems overkill. Once you've gotten everything with class="fade" it seems like you should be able to access individual items as you would an array: getElementByClassName("fade")[0]. Anyway, this guy's site will be worth exploring at some point.

Emulating Position: Fixed;

I've skimmed to the end of The Zen of CSS Design and it's not in there, so here is a demo of my position: fixed; emulation trick. It's not ready for prime time with anything beyond decorative elements, but it's been live and working since last july, so it's about time I wrote it up and asked if there were anyone who would like to help me refine it. The limitations that still need to be overcome are explained at the bottom of the page.

Usable XMLHttpRequest in Practice | Baekdal.com

a good article with a handy little list to check your Ajax interface to make sure it's as usable as a normal form.