Beast-Blog.com
Mike Cherim's Professional and Personal Web Log

I noticed others have done a year-end recap of things done and things written and I thought that was neat. I decided to do the latter here with a list of some of my more decent articles of 2006. Hopefully the Best of the Beast! I hope you have enjoyed my efforts.

Continue reading “The Best of the Beast in 2006” »

Fellow Accessites team member and good friend Jack Pickard came up with a fun and interesting idea: Namely a Blog Swap Alternative Christmas Message where participants will make guest comments in other people’s blogs related to Christmas. I will be posting Jack’s message here (keep reading), mine will go in Dan Champion’s blog, Dan’s will be posted in Stephen Lang’s blog, and Stephen’s message will be posted in Jack’s. Should be fun and interesting. Here’s Jack’s offering:

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Why should US businesses make their sites accessible? Especially considering it’s not toothy law and where the law does apply, there is little to no compliance to serve as a worthy example. For instance, since 1998, sites affiliated with and for the US government are supposed to comply with Section 508 guidelines. But many, if not most, don’t. I suspected this was simply due to aged designs that would be made accessible when refurbished. After yesterday morning, though, I realize the US isn’t even close. I don’t particularly want to criticize my own country’s government, but the failings in the area of web accessibility is undeniably pathetic. Get with the program Uncle Sam!

Continue reading “The U.S. Needs Exemplary Accessibility” »

Web accessibility isn’t exceptionally difficult to get a handle on, and the majority of its practices fit nicely into contemporary web development, especially if said development adheres to web standards. It’s like most things, you just have to embrace it a bit. But, when first learning web accessibility and uncovering its secrets, like many things, it can seem daunting and difficult. I think a lot of developers are downright intimidated by web accessibility — maybe even scared to go that route. But why? I suspect the reason is web accessibility is a discipline that lacks accessibility. Just look at the play book (and what’s ahead).

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Well, Joe Dolson tagged me and now I must spill my guts — 5 feet worth anyway. I am supposed to share with you five things you probably don’t know about me. And based on the good stuff Joe offered, I’m not supposed to share just any old crap, but to provide some good stuff as well. I don’t know how good this will be, but here goes.

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When I started using computers in the early 90s I used to complain every time Microsoft or some software manufacturer came up with a new version of whatever it was of theirs I was using. My gripe was that I had finally gotten a good handle on the old product and didn’t really want to upgrade and re-live an often painful learning curve. I was content. But, as support waned, I relented and did as was expected of me — what I was essentially forced to do: I upgraded. As software improved and I became more computer savvy these transitions got easier. Usually, after the fact, I was happy I stayed current. That was me as a user. Now, as a web developer, I find myself on the other side of that very situation.

Continue reading “Supporting Legacy Browsers, or Not” »

Is the dialogue (dialog) class semantic? Is it proper? I don’t know, but it’ll look right when writing dialogue on the web. Stories and other works are well served with a dialogue style paragraph. It’s ubiquitous in written works and literature throughout the print world so it serves the reader well to carry this style over to the web. According to William Strunk of Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style fame — which is arguably the authority on proper writing, a paragraph is a “unit of composition,” but when writing dialogue, it’s each unto its own, so to speak.

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One of the great things about the PHP server-side scripting language is the ability to “include” files. Using includes you can share files across several pages. For example, if you’re not using a functions library to handle global page sections, you can create a file called header.php, put some variable hooks in it to handle a dynamic title, keyword set, and description, then use this one file for all your web pages. This can save a tremendous amount of initial work when creating a site, plus it can greatly reduce maintenance down the road if you want to make changes. But the web being what it is, it is possible to access some includes directly and thus you may want to secure them.

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Here’s another short story from the old fiction department. I like writing stuff like this sometimes. Forgive me. This is a light-hearted tale and I hope you enjoy it.

I got up pretty early. I hadn’t slept well. I dreamt a lot. I dreamt of rabbit hunting for some odd reason, when actually I had never even seen a rabbit. But you know how dreams can be. The last glimpses of my dream quickly evaporated into daytime reality as they usually do. I yawned.

Continue reading “It’s Shaping up to be a Good Day” »