Drive Traffic Template

[Green Beast]

Hi guys,

Though it's not normal for me, I was given a comp and tasked with making a template that is accessible, standards compliant, and CSS-driven. I didn't have too much say in the creative aspect, colors, etc., I was just told to make it so. I did. I'm pretty sure I did okay with it. It does have a fair number of accessibility features, it is standards complaint, semantically-built, it should re-size twice assuming so start at default sizes. The index, due to its complex layout was a challenge. The main thing I'm looking for is to see how it holds up on other browsers and the legacy stuff. It was tested with IE6.2, IE7 Beta2, Opera 8.5, Netscape 7.6, and Firefox 1.0.7. Hopefully it doesn't break too much on Macs and whatnot.

http://green-beast.com/portfolio/drivetraffic/index.php
http://green-beast.com/portfolio/drivetraffic/innerpage.php

Variation:

http://green-beast.com/portfolio/drivetraffic/index2.php

Thanks in advance,
Mike

[Simply]

That's pretty nice Mike. I like the first option better than the second.

[NancyJ]

No access keys?

With such a large number of tab targetable elements its hard to navigate the site with the keyboard.
Also the drivetraffic logo moves when you tab over it ;)

[evo]

None of those work in Safari. I've not tried (mac)IE, cos I know it won't work in that.

[Green Beast]

No access keys?

With such a large number of tab targetable elements its hard to navigate the site with the keyboard.
Also the drivetraffic logo moves when you tab over it ;)

Nope, they can interfere and it is really best not to use them. Even at Accessites ( http://accessites.org/settings/#customkeys ) where we have a user script to set custom accesskeys it was a problem. We had defaults set, the first being alt+0 (zero). One of the safeest, or so we thought. A person using our form had an odd character in his name, written by alt+023 (or something like that). Well, for him, he was sent to another page while trying to use our form. We never even knew. Now we don't offer default values. Accesskeys are one of those "sounds good on paper but doesn't implement well" things.

I do offer some jump links though to help with keyboard navigation.

None of those work in Safari. I've not tried (mac)IE, cos I know it won't work in that.

Some versions I'm told it does hold up in, while others I know it's broken... horribly. I was told it wasn't too bad in MacIE.

I plan to tackle a couple of the things today, the rest of it may have to be offered as an alternate.

I really do not like this type of design. Very difficult to pull it off well.

Thanks guys.

Mike

[NancyJ]

I would have thought there are far more people who cant/dont want to use a mouse for navigation than have a funny character in their name but not a keyboard that can type it without resorting to alt + 0123 etc.
I always use access keys when they're available - as long as they're clearly identified.

[Green Beast]

I would have thought there are far more people who cant/dont want to use a mouse for navigation than have a funny character in their name but not a keyboard that can type it without resorting to alt + 0123 etc.
I always use access keys when they're available - as long as they're clearly identified.

I do too, NancyJ, but just on my own sites since I have to learn the keys on others I don't bother. And while it's true that more people use a keyboard for navigation than have odd characters (I'm guessing that's correct, though with such an international presence, we do see a LOT of names with characters being submitted), we coudn't forgo that persons needs.

We still offer the keys, but the user has to set them for themsleves (which ensures there will be no conflicts). It's one-time task since the preferences are stored in a cookie. This type of scripting will catch on since there are so many accessibility developers who see problems with accesskeys. (http://www.wats.ca/articles/accesskeys/19).

Regarding keyboard navigation, I do feel we went to great lenghts to make that a usable and doable experience what with the foucs and on-demand jump links we provided.

Not perfect, haven't seen a perfect site yet, but we did try to make it good and well-rounded.

Mike