James
March 15, 2005

creativenz.govt.nz

They should be leading by example and they are, with a nice, clean css/xhtml site. Well done to them.

So who did it? Was it your lot Barry? Hence the post?? ;-)

ross
March 15, 2005

Yeah...

Its probably not a major achievment to validate HTML 4.01 transitional (egov doesn't allow xHTML). Design is pretty neutral, I would have figured some maximum widths would come in handy to stop Barry's note with the divorced captions.

It would also have been nice to see some image replacement techniques on the headings as opposed to just alt tags. I tend to look at accessibility before bothering about final validation to be honest. I also get wierd margin/lines between each of the LI's on the main nav in FF.

It may also suffer from "divitis", and ID-mongering but that is being pretty anal. It certainly is a progression in the right direction.

Nice work :)

ross
March 21, 2005

Its more evidence of bad form than anything terminal. I can't really see a need for that number of wrapping DIVs. It just adds uncacheable weight to a page.

The ID-mongering is also something that personally I would sway from. ID's are probably a little to powerful to be bandied about as hooks for individual LI's. IMHO.

One last tidbit, I would also prefer Tantek's filter hacks to feed different CSS to browsers, than using non-standard IE CC's.

But as I mentioned, this is really technical nitpicking of what is a pretty solid solution. I suspect that the designers had valid reasons for their decisions.

Blackspade
March 22, 2005

I find the body text quite hard to read, it could do with some more leading, imo

also, headings as images ? ..they could have achived the same thing with CSS

pretty good tho i guess

Pete
March 23, 2005

Disclaimer: That was actually a test message I rushed to write due to gremlins in the system that had to be fixed, I wish I had clarified it more but thems the breaks...

Anyway, I can see both sides of the argument for image replacement. I wouldn't go so far as to say that CSS1 was intended to be used in the way it has with image replacement. It's a valid use of the code, yes, but I doubt the authors designed text indent to be used in that way.

The main opposition that I've heard which has come from John Allsopp when he was speaking at the Wellington Web Standards group last month. I'm sure he'd be happy to discuss his thoughts on the matter. (In fact the group video taped the meeting and said it would be posted online - but I can't find it, or I'd point you to it.)

However, I'm not keen about using browser specific hacks (like the box model hack) and discourage anyone from using them unless 100% percent necessary (i.e. the world will end if you don't!). I see the "ideal" of using (X)HTML/CSS is that you're writing the site once for all devices and media. At times filter hacks can be used as short cuts, to get a job done or whatever - but they shouldn't be used lightly.

I've had a quick test with JAWS over the Creative NZ site, it seems to pick up the headings just fine, except for the homepage which has none on the main content area.