Accessibility statement

I’ve tried to make this site accessible to everybody, regardless of what browsing device is used. If you find something that needs improvement to make the site even more accessible, please let me know.

High contrast layout

There is a high contrast, single column, large type layout available. It is a bit experimental at the moment, but please do try it out and let me know what you think. A link to switch between the high contrast and normal stylesheets is available on each page, in the page header.

Switch to high contrast layout.

Accesskeys

Most browsers support jumping to specific links by typing keys defined on the web site. This is a potentially very useful feature for many users. However, accesskeys oftan conflict with keyboard shortcuts defined by the browser or operating system. Because of this, 456 Berea Street does not use accesskeys. More information on the problems related to accesskeys is available in the blog post Accesskey problems remain in XHTML 2.

Standards compliance

This site is built on valid HTML 4.01 Strict for structure and CSS for presentation.

A modern web browser like Firefox, Safari or Opera is needed to make the most out of this site, but thanks to the separation of content and presentation it should be accessible to any browsing device, including Internet Explorer.

Navigation aids

All archive pages have rel=previous, next, first, and home links to aid navigation in text-only browsers and screen readers. Mozilla users can also take advantage of this feature by selecting the View menu, Show/Hide, Site Navigation Bar, Show Only As Needed (or Show Always). Opera 7 has similar functionality.

Links

Many links have title attributes which describe the link in greater detail, unless the text of the link already fully describes the target (such as the headline of an article).

Whenever possible, links are written to make sense out of context.

There are no javascript: pseudo-links. All links can be followed in any browser, even if scripting is turned off. There are no links that open new windows without warning.

Acronyms and abbreviations

Due to its technical nature, this site makes use of many acronyms and abbreviations. Most instances (I may unintentionally have missed some, and others are intentionally not defined every time they occur, like CET.) are defined with the appropriate HTML tag. Here is a (hopefully) complete list of all the acronyms and abbreviations you may see throughout this site:

AOL

America OnLine

ASP

Active Server Pages

CET

Central European Time

CMS

Content Management System

CSS

Cascading Style Sheets

CSS3

Cascading Style Sheets Level 3

DOM

Document Object Model

FIR

Fahrner Image Replacement

HTML

HyperText Markup Language

IE

Internet Explorer

MIME

Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions

MT

Movable Type

PHP

Hypertext Preprocessor

PNG

Portable Network Graphics

ROTFLMAO

Roll On The Floor Laughing My Ass Off

SQL

Structured Query Language

URL

Unified Resource Locator

US

United States

W3C

World Wide Web Consortium

WaSP

Web Standards Project

WYSIWYG

What You See Is What You Get

XHTML

Extensible HyperText Markup Language

XML

Extensible Markup Language

Information, sponsorship, and externals

Best of 456 Berea Street

Quotations and citations: quoting text

A closer look at the q, blockquote, and cite elements.

Hand coding

Why hand-coding HTML and CSS is better than using WYSIWYG applications.

CSS 2.1 Selectors, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Detailed explanations of the selectors that are available in CSS 2.1.

Automatic pullquotes with JavaScript and CSS

How to use JavaScript and CSS to create pullquotes without duplicating content in your markup.

CSS Validator colour warnings are not errors

Messages about missing colours or background-colours are not errors and can often safely be ignored.

More popular articles

Random places to go

• AlastairC
• Box of chocolates
• Beast-Blog.com
• Robert's talk
• Lillbra
• Wait till I come!
• The Autistic Cuckoo
• molly.com
• Jens Meiert
• Adactio: Journal