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Finally got around to fixing my corrupt zip file issues. Fresh and flawless zip files are now available for the latest versions of all widgets and plugins.
BTW the compact content plugins have been updated with a bunch of small fixes (IE6 benefits the most from this release). See new examples, downloads and changelog for version 3.5.
I finished updating the ARIA keyboard navigation plugin tonight.
As of this version the plugin manages focus using tabindex alone, which means it functions in browsers old and new (whether they support ARIA explicitly or not). Browser support has been tested with Firefox 3.6.3, Chrome 4, Safari 4, Opera 10.51 and the Trident Trio (IE 6, 7 and 8).
During the refactoring I also managed to shave ~170 lines from total code weight — and this version has more comments!
In light of increasing browser support for CSS3 media queries, I have spent some time today updating the transformer layout plugin in an attempt to achieve a seamless integration of the new CSS3 functionality for including stylesheets dependent on the browser’s current viewport width.
Most media query implementations I have seen use px units to define min-width and/or max-width limits. This approach is fine for browsers that zoom, but less than ideal for browsers that don’t. Not a huge issue when you consider that the modern browsers that support media queries all zoom by default! But for transformer layout to retain support for older browsers that don’t zoom, em units would be the way to go.
Firstly, I ran some tests of current browser support for CSS3 media queries using em units, the results were:
em units and load the correct stylesheet after zoom level change.em units but fail to load the correct stylesheet after zoom level change.Alexander Farkas has a nice solution for detecting media query support and supplementing for non-supporting browsers but unfortunately it doesn’t support em units or compensate for Safari and Chrome’s insufficient handling of zoom level changes.
The new transformer layout plugin takes Alexander’s great work and rectifies both of those limitations so now it can be used to achieve an approach to layout optimised for all browsers, devices, resolutions, text sizes and zoom levels.
Today I updated the compact content widgets such that assistive technologies that don’t appropriately support the title attribute are still able to access the text expansion of each button on the User Interface (UI) for the widget.
While doing this, I thought I should take the time to document the updated approach I use when creating groups of UI elements for my DHTML projects.
Let me know your thoughts.
I’ve always been a fan of flexible layout and trying to avoid introducing horizontal scrollbars whenever possible. Large content however poses an eternal conundrum: How to accommodate large content in tight spaces?
Some web designers like to lock a page design to a fixed width (or set a minimum width) forcing a horizontal scrollbar at lower resolutions for the entire site. This approach however does not accommodate some of the larger content types and I feel its a missed opportunity to maximise accessibility. A flexible layout allows your design to be adaptable and optimised for the device/resolution currently being used to view it.
I’ve been playing with some ideas that can be used in conjunction with any layout to accommodate wide content as easily as possible at lower resolutions.
With this example, trying resizing your browser window, make it fairly narrow.
The code is not production ready yet (IE6 in particular needs work) but it should give you an idea of where it’s heading.
Let me know what you think!