Update: I’ve removed the tabbed interface from V3GGIE.com. This particular use of the tabbed module seemed to have created some confusion in users. The approach is still valid, just not the way I originally implemented it. See the tabbed search form on V3GGIE.com

Step 1. Create the basic HTML code.

The tabbed code is a simple pattern:

1. Start with a parent div and give it an id and class=”yui-navset”.
   
2. Create an unordered list inside this div with class=”yui-nav”.
3. Each list includes a deep link to a corresponding div that is also a child of the parent div. The link text in an em tag.
   
4. V3GGIE Search
5. Create a div with class=”yui-content” and create a set of content containing divs. Each div has an id.
   
   ...

   ...

   ...

6. Insert the Tabview CSS at the top of the page, the Tab View JS at the bottom of the page, create a small js that instantiates the tab-view module.
7. For easier styling, use the sam_skin CSS package and add class=”yui-skin-sam” to the body.

Step 2. Use PHP to make it more interesting

Each page calls this chunk of code to insert the tabbed form, it also sets a variable ($selected), determining which tab is selected on page load. I’m also inserting the last search query into the text input to make it easier on the user. This is easily done by grabbing the query from the Request object.

The finished code:

View the source as a text file

The Final Product

We now have a tabbed module that allows the user to find recipes, news, blogs, and local restaurants from any page. This is an easy introduction to the YUI libraries. However, I came across the following surprises:

• The order of the tabs must match the order of the target divs. I moved my tabs around and discovered they were toggling the wrong forms.
• The links that generate the tabs need to have em tags surrounding the text
• You’ll need to download the entire YUI package to gain access to the CSS and sprites needed for the library. The examples on the YUI site assume relative links to files, you will either need to duplicate that file structure or upload the skin’s sprite and change the CSS accordingly.

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• Navigation bar with tabs using CSS and sliding doors effect
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• jQuery Nested Menu
• The lessons of CSS frameworks
• Rounded tabs with Dijit
• Dynamic CSS (Yet another follow up)

There’s a little attribute in HTML links that is starting to get a bit of attention lately. The “rel” attribute is a sparsely defined attribute that applies some meta information about a link’s relationship to other documents. Unfortunately, this information is usually hidden from your users. Let’s take a light-hearted stab at turning it into a visual element.

Rel attribute usage

While the W3C originally considered the rel attribute to describe the relationship of pages to each other, i.e. next, previous, directory, and start. The attribute has been adopted by the Microformat community for its inherit usefulness. The rel attribute is now used for tags, to define your relationship to someone, and even to tell search engines not to bother following a link.

The opportunities to use the rel attribute are seemingly endless. There are more proposals to define people you don’t like and links for voting.

But all of this flexibility comes at a small price. To remain valid, you need to tell the browser what these new rel values may actually mean. This is handled by linking to appropriate profiles. Just simply insert the profiles into your head tag. Multiple profiles may throw a validation error, but it’s ok. You don’t need to do this for the standard rel values.

We will be using the CSS3 attribute selector functionality to look at the value of the rel attribute and apply some style accordingly. First we’ll add some padding and a background image to any link that has a rel attribute. We’ll then use background positioning to display an icon that is appropriate for the link. It’s a fairly simple hack.

For more information on using attribute selectors, check out my previous posts:

• Progressive enhancement of links using the CSS attribute selector
• Attribute selectors to provide language information

Sample HTML Code

Sample CSS


a[rel] {padding-left:20px; background:url(rel-sprite.png) no-repeat 0 0; }
a[rel~="help"] {background-position: 0 -350px ;}
a[rel~="license"] {background-position: 0 -1347px ;}
a[rel~="no-follow"] {background-position: 0 -1200px ;}
a[rel~="tag"] {background-position: 0 -47px ;}


It’s all fun and games

I’ll be the first to admit this exercise has significant issues. I’m assuming the following elements are true:

1. All possible rel attribute values are accounted for in my CSS, if not there will be a blank space generated by the first rule
2. You can only have one relationship defined by XFN. Unfortunately, most people are defined by multiple values, i.e. rel=”met friend colleague”. This CSS does not account for multiple values.

So, the display of your rel attributes may be a bit off in the edge cases. Keep the spirit light and nobody will say anything… I hope. Have fun with your rel attributes. They’re just sitting there waiting to be used.

View the finished rel attribute style example.

Related Information

• Microformats Wiki: Profile URI’s
• Microformat: Rel Design Pattern
• Microformat: Tags
• Microformat: No Follow
• Microformat: Bookmark
• Microformat: XFN – Friends Network
• Microformat: XEN – Enemies Network
• W3C: Link Types
• Icon Buffet – The source of most icons used in this example

We have avoided using CSS3 rules for too long. It’s been difficult to justify using rules that won’t work for a significant portion of our audience, Internet Explorer 7 and below. However, Internet Explorer 8 is coming out soon and does work with the features we like.

I think it’s fairly safe to assume IE7 users will upgrade to IE8 within a short time. Those stuck with IE6 for one reason or another will slowly disappear as they are given new computers or their locked down environments are upgraded.

So, with the future of CSS3 functionality within reach, I’ve been energized to begin experimenting again. I’ll be writing a series of blog posts over the next few months that look at CSS3 functionality as a progressive enhancement. How can we continue to deliver a perfectly fine web site to IE6 and IE7 and mobile phones while enhancing the functionality of more modern browsers and devices?

Attribute Selectors

CSS attribute selectors are the golden ring on the web development merry-go-round. They can be daunting to learn, addictive to use, but then disappointing when you realize they are out of your grasp when you test in Internet Explorer. We can, however, begin using them to add additional functionality based on your pre-existing, semantic code. Attribute selectors give you power to write CSS that pinpoints the stuff you already code, without having to go back and add classes or ids. I’ve written previously about using attribute selectors to let your users know the language of a site they are about to visit. This trick relies on the rarely used hreflang attribute, which identifies the language of the site targeted in a link.

There are many other attributes in your HTML, from table headers, image src, link titles, and selected options. Think about all of those juicy attributes just waiting to be targeted. Also think about how you could actually do something useful with them.

Announce the file type of a link with CSS

I once worked for a company that had hundreds of thousands of static HTML pages in their intranet. With no content management system; it was impossible to make global changes. The only thing they shared was a common set of style sheets. Does this sound familiar? Follow along as we increase your site’s usability in a less than perfect, but efficient way.

First off, for accessibility, you need to let users know when a link will open a file, what type it is, and how large it is. This is best done by adding it to your HTML code:


Foo presentation (.pdf, 5kb)


That delivers the information to everyone, regardless of their browser. This, however takes time and is a daunting task for updating legacy code.

We can, however, use the atttribute selector to target the extension of the link to display the icon and insert the text describing the file type. Here’s the sample HTML code:

It’s a simple list of links for different types of files. We’ll be looking at the extensions: .zip, .pdf, .doc, .exe, .png, and .mp3. Feel free to extend this list to any extension you so desire. This would be especially helpful for a company that uses proprietary file types within their intranet.

Now, let’s look at the CSS:


a[href$="zip"],
a[href$="pdf"],
a[href$="doc"],
a[href$="exe"],
a[href$="png"],
a[href$="mp3"] {padding-left:20px; background:url(bg-file-icons.png) no-repeat 0 0;}
a[href$="png"]{background-position: 0 -48px;}
a[href$="pdf"] {background-position: 0 -99px;}
a[href$="mp3"]{background-position: 0 -145px;}
a[href$="doc"]{background-position: 0 -199px;}
a[href$="exe"]{background-position: 0 -250px;}

a[href$=".zip"]:after{content: "(.zip file)"; color:#999; margin-left:5px;}
a[href$=".pdf"]:after{content: "(.pdf file)"; color:#999; margin-left:5px;}
a[href$=".doc"]:after{content: "(.doc file)"; color:#999; margin-left:5px;}
a[href$=".exe"]:after{content: "(.exe file)"; color:#999; margin-left:5px;}
a[href$=".mp3"]:after{content: "(.mp3 file)"; color:#999; margin-left:5px;}
a[href$=".png"]:after{content: "(.png file)"; color:#999; margin-left:5px;}
a[href$=".exe"]:after{content: "(.exe file)"; color:#999; margin-left:5px;}


See the final test page.

Pattern matching in the attribute selector

We have some limited “regular expression” functionality in CSS3. We can search for an attribute’s presence and match a pattern within the attribute’s value.
Patrick Hunlon has a good summary of the pattern matching:

• [foo] — Has an attribute named “foo”
• [foo="bar"] — Has an attribute named “foo” with a value of “bar” (“bar”)
• [foo~="bar"] — Value has the word “bar” in it somewhere (“blue bar stools”)
• [foo^="bar"] — Value begins with “bar” (“barstool”)
• [foo$="bar"] — Value ends with “bar” (“I was at the bar”)
• [foo*="bar"] — Value has bar somewhere (“I was looking for barstools”)

Attach icons to anything with CSS

The CSS is simply looking to see if the desired extension is at the end of the link href. If so, apply the following styles.

Adding an icon to the link

First, we are match any of the desired file extensions. We then add a background image and some padding on the left side with a bulk rule. Then the background position on the sprite is adjust for each particular link type. Combining multiple icons into one background image reduces the number of files the user has to download, making your page faster. This will work with any browser that recognizes attribute selectors, including Internet Explorer 7. However, support for more obscure attributes may be spotty.

There’s another peculiarity with pattern matching. Some attributes are case sensitive while others are not. The href attribute is NOT case sensitive, so the above rules will also work if your image name was FOO.ZIP, foo.Zip, or foo.zip.

Adding the descriptive text

Now, we are going to add a bit of descriptive text to each link. We can’t describe the file size, but we can tell the user what type of file it is. This is using the :after(content:) functionality and is supported by Internet Explorer 8 (yeah!!!) but not Internet Explorer 7 and below (boo!!!).
We will also adjust the color and give it a bit of spacing.

A big step forward with a small chunk of work

There you have it. A small chunk of CSS coding has now added substantial usability to your legacy pages. While the CSS version is not as accessible as having the data in the actual link code, it’s a significant improvement over nothing at all. Further, there’s no harmful effect on browsers that do not understand the function. You’ve added information, but haven’t taken anything away. This is a win in my book. To save some time and effort, you could just download and use this package of CSS and icons from Alexander Kaiser.

This rather simple example of attribute selectors and pattern matching can open your eyes to many possibilities. There are a number of developers that have been expoloring this potential for the past few years. Take a look at some of these resources for more ideas and have some fun.

• CSS3 – Atribute Selectors Definition W3C
• CSS 3 Selectors Explained
• CSS: A Tribute to Selectors
• YUI: Selector Utility Use CSS3 selectors in JavaScript
• Dynamic File Type Notations
• Cool use for CSS attribute selectors – Hiding banner ads with CSS
• Showing Hyperlink Cues with CSS
• Showing Hyperlink Cues with CSS

Congratulations, you’ve probably done some usability testing with an actual screen reader.

For those who put your hands down; here’s the deal-eeo. Screenreaders ignore title attributes by default. Sucks… I know. I’ve been adding really juicy title attributes for usability and they’re being ignored!

Go ahead and duplicate your text

I was doing some user-testing today with Victor Tsaran, the Accessibility Project Manager at Yahoo! He came across a button with link text that was the same as the image. He said, “what’s this going to do?” It was a simple thing like “more info”… But the title attribute said “Visit Joe’s Web Site for more information.” That, he suggested, should have been the link text.

The link text is hidden from the visual users and the title attribute is hidden from the screen readers; so duplicating the information isn’t a bad thing. If you find yourself putting good information in a title attribute for a link that is using image replacement, duplicate the content in the link. It’s that simple. Now, put your hands down, it’s starting to smell musky around here.

CSS Fix

This will fix the problem in Firefox. Just drop this into your global.css file.

a:focus { -moz-outline-style: none; }/*this avoids having image replacement sections display a dotted outline*/


JavaScript Fix

This will fix the issue in the other browsers.

var theahrefs = document.getElementsByTagName('a');
//fix dotted line thing when link is OnClicked
for(var x=0;x!=theahrefs.length;x++){
theahrefs[x].onfocus = function stopLinkFocus(){this.hideFocus=true;};
}


The Breakdown

The site has a series of floated divs to display the screenshots. The screenshot is applied as the background image of the div with an inline style. Inside the div is a link that is given display:block and a transparent background image.

Great idea – room for improvement?

While I think the visual design for these screenshots is well thought-out. I don’t like the underlying code. The screenshots are content; miniature representations of other sites. Adding them to the CSS is treating them as decorative elements. The text for each link is: “SCREENSHOT, ” making the page unusable with the styles disabled. To give this page more structure and semantic strength, I would modify the underlying code as such:

HTML Code

CSS Code


.screenshotlist {float:left; list-style-type:none;}
.screenshotlist li {float:left; margin:9px; }
.screenshotlist a {display:block; width:146px; height:130px; position:relative; }
.screenshotlist a strong {text-indent:-1000em; z-index:20; position: absolute; top:0; left:0; width:100%; height:100%; background:url(screenshot.png) no-repeat -154px 0; }
.screenshotlist a:visited strong {background-position:0 0;}
.screenshotlist a img {margin:5px 0 0 5px; border:none; z-index:1;}


Benefits of the new code

The screenshots now have some structure; an unordered list with links full of good, crunchy content. Screenreaders and those without CSS will have access to the information. Javascript can be used to target links within the screenshotthumb div to open a new window without the need of inline scripting.

Cavaets: I haven’t tested this code yet. It’s very possible the z-index styles are not required. As an alternative, remove the margin on the image and replace it with a border. Add a rule to change the border color on hover and visited.

Design Meltdown is a great site for learning about design concepts. I’ve gleaned a number of nice ideas from them and would love to say I gave a bit of help back to them.

I had just begun learning about the French Revolution and was not prepared for the argument that arose. Robespierre and the
Reign of Terror still divide people into camps.

It’s rare to find a topic with such strong opinions expressed in web design (not counting Internet Explorer). However, I recently found the
standardista populace building ramparts in the streets of the city when I asked the seemingly innocent question: “Should .pdf files be
opened in a new window?”

The answers fall into two main camps:

1. Do not hijack the browser; let the user determine the behavior of their browser.
2. Make it easier for visitors that are not savvy enough to know how to control their browser’s options.

Hypothetical vs. Reality

In a perfect world, information is provided efficiently in all browsers to people of all abilities. HTML code should not interfere with the
browser’s native behavior, allowing the user to establish preferences for font size, background-color, and file downloading.

In the real world, the visitor has to wait for files to be presented, can lose track of the original web page, and can accidentally shut down
the browser instead of the file. Therefore, the programmer can assist the viewer by opening the file in a new window.

I’ve summarized the recent comments over this question (from the web standards group mailing list) to decide which is the best approach.

Basic standards

Regardless of the window option you choose, there are some elements that everyone agrees upon. The link must let the visitor know that
they are opening something other than another web page. The file type and file size should be attached to the link, i.e.: <a href="foo">contact list (.pdf, 25kb). This gives the visitor the basic information needed to make an informed decision about how the file should be opened.