alt attributes required? Always?TL;DR Yes. Yes, they are. Although the HTML5 specifications include a special case where the alt attribute can be omitted and still be conformant HTML5, this certainly doesn’t apply to any image you add to a page.
alt attributes required? Always?” »Or maybe not. Don’t get me wrong – adding semantics is a good thing. But what’s better is adding the right semantics. This post is coming from a conversation I recently had discussing an issue about how WordPress should display a set of radio buttons. The proposal was to take the current format (radio buttons separated with break elements) and reformat them using list items. Awesome! More semantics! But let’s take a closer look at that. When you wrap content […]
Continue reading “Dude! Let’s improve things by adding more semantics!” »Style is important. There is no debate around the proposition that people want a website that looks good. This is for a very good reason – an attractive website will draw in your customers, build their confidence in what you can provide for them, and keep them engaged with your website. But a great website can’t just look pretty. You can create a gorgeous website with nothing but a single large image. This can be beautiful graphic design – but […]
Continue reading “Introduction to Web Semantics” »Part 1 (Contracts, Site Requirements,Information Architecture) Part 2 (Hosting and Security) Part 3 (Navigation, Scent) Part 4 (Semantics, Structure vs. Design, Universal design) Part 5 (Interaction, Errors, and Administration) So, we’re finally getting to the meat of best practice web development. This is what people are usually thinking of when they ask about best practices in web design or web programming: actually building the web site itself. Web design best practices encompass a wide range of needs — everything from […]
Continue reading “Best Practices in Web Development: Part 4” »This is part 1 of 2. Part 2 is my Guide to the use of Semantic HTML (HyperText Markup Language) Elements I’ve seen a lot of articles discussing the importance of HTML and XHTML (eXtensible HyperText Markup Language – HTML reformulated as XML (eXtensible Markup Language)) semantics. I’ve seen articles describing what it means for a document to be semantic. Most of these articles, however, don’t provide a serious overview of what HTML elements actually may be considered semantic — […]
Continue reading “Why use semantic HTML?” »