As a follow up to my HTML form dos and dont’s post comes the next part of the series, HTML img tag does and dont’s. Some are musts for every site, others are common sense accessbility tips that you should use, but may skip if on a tight budget. If you’re a designer and are experienced, doing all of these does not add time to a project and makes the web a much better palce for everyone involved.

1. Do use the alt attribute. It allows context for people using graphicless browsing. This text will appear inline in place of the image if the image is not displayed. Not to mention that without them, the accessibility of your site is dropped an order of magnitude for those that use text to speech programs to help them browse.
2. Do use the title attribute if you want tool tips to appear upon hovering. Correct specification compliance calls for these to be made from this attribute. Some browsers realzie that web devs don’t usually do this and substitute the text in the alt attribute if it is there. Not only is this wrong, but it is also not guaranteed. This is of utmost importance if you have a slow loading site and people know where the navigation bar is. They can hover and find a navigation image they need before it loads.
3. Do not use images for your sole navigation. Back them up with text links as well.
4. Do use the height and width attributes. Use them to properly describe the ACTUAL size of the graphic. This allows browsers to pre-render layout knowing how much space the image will take up.
5. Do not use height and width attributes to resize images in teh browser. There are several sites I visit that have 1024 x 768 size graphics shown as small thumbnails, but use teh actual 1024 x 768 size graphic and allow the browser to shrink it to the size they specify in the height and width properties. Whereas, this does work, those images are HUGE. Resizing them in a graphics program to the desired display size will drastically reduce the load time of your page.
6. Do not use spacer graphics. CSS (and tables if you must) are quite capable of performing layout without if done properly. Even if the graphic is only downloaded once and then cached, the browser still has to make a call to the server each time the image is referenced. This back and forth slows things down.
7. Do use an alt attribute of “” if you must use spacer graphics. Screen readers will say an unknown image exists if the alt attribute is missing, but will be silent if they see a blank “” defined for the alt attribute.
8. Do use descriptive text for the alt and title attributes. Don’t use generic text like “logo” and “click here”. Instead say “CompanyX logo” and “Shop our store” instead. Oh, and make sure your company name is used, NOT the word company…
9. Do not mess with the tab order of linked images, this is counter intuitive for users.
10. Do keep in mind the total size of all images used on your page. Remember that not everyone has DSL/Broadband.
11. Do use the longdesc attribute to point to a text file with a long description of the image if needed. This is very useful for things like maps, charts, graphs, etc. Anything a screen reader using person could not understand from the alt attribute alone. Just using “2004 financials chart” tells that user nothing, but having a file that spells it out in text allows them to understand the menaing behind the image. An oft unused ability here is to link to a copyright file for sites such as photographers.
12. Do not use onClick events as the sole method of triggering functionality for changing the interface. In other words, if you have a column of information on the left, and use JavaScript/DHTML to change the innerText of a column on the right to display more details when an object is clicked. This is not possible for people not using mice.
13. Do not use the “align”, “border”, “hspace”, and “vspace” attributes, as they have been deprecated from HTML 4.01, and are not supported at all in XHTML Strict 1.0. Browsers at some point will stop interpreting these. No need to switch over old sites yet, but if you’re doing a redesign or new site, build for the future.

While not necessarily all encompassing, these are some of the most important issues that are oft forgotten. Are there any others I missed?

My dear wife Aileen is heading out of town next weekend to be a Bridesmaid in the wedding of her college roomate, Mary. This would normally have absolutely no effect on me. This time however I am mortified.

Why? Because for the first time since her birth, I will be alone with our daughter Kelsey – for 4 days. I don’t know why the prospect frightens me so much what with her being such a good kid, but for some reason I sense impending end of the world like doom.

I have visions of crayoned walls, a trashed house, lack of food, no sleep, me crying more than her… None of this will actually happen mind you, but the fear is there and it’s real. Even though I do a pretty good job being a stay at home dad, I still feel so unable to cope sometimes.

The roughest part that I don’t even want to think about is that Kelsey is still breast feeding. She still feeds to fall asleep at night. I’m hoping that regular and/or soy milk (she drinks both) will be a palatable substitute for her, even though it’s not on tap.

I have to start getting prepared on Tuesday. Stock the fridge, clean all the dishes, clean all the clothes, get activities planned, have outfits ready, make sure all the diaper supplies are stocked. My biggest coping mechanism is to be overly prepared. That way when I see that Kelsey is about to need something, or I’m starting to drag on energy I know that whatever ether of us needs is already ready to go.

So now I’m left to wonder what’s worse, weaning Kelsey from breast milk cold turkey, or weaning me from the night time help Aileen affords me cold turkey. I think it’s the latter. Wish me luck…

When I first started blogging, I relied on finding good blogs from other people’s blogrolls. I trust Lenn’s opinion of good content, and started there. From there I found Scoble’s blog. I saw the 0001011 part of the URL and wondered to myself, “I should take the time to translate that from binary sometime.” then immediatley I thought, “wow, geek is right”, coming up with a binary translation as part of his blog URL.

After a couple of weeks of reading other people’s blogs, I finally found another radio.weblogs one that was something like 0001014. I’m not sure what came first, the “man I’m a techy dork to even have seen that in the first place vibe” or the “whew, I’m sure glad I never wasted time translating that vibe.”

Whichever it was, that damn URL stuck in my head. Stuck so hard in fact, that when I saw the markings in this picture I was sure Scoble was blogchalking the sidewalk right outside the entrance tent to the Kerry Rally on Pier 62 this morning…

Eerie isn’t it???

Pictures I took this morning at Seattle’s new Central Library (and yes, that green IS the correct green… :

I got here early and had to stand outside for about 20 minutes with the others waiting to get in. The first thing I noticed was the weird gritty consistency the concrete at teh entrance had. There were littel sparklies popped up out to give grip. There was also a blackish sand like substance that seemed to collect in the soles of your shoes if you paced too much.

It is ultra hard for a stroller/handicapped person to get in the front. What might have be an alternate to the revolving door was blocked by a PG&E worker. A couple kindly folks helped jam me in and push/pull me through as the stroller skidded sideways through the door.

We finally got in and were able to explore.

In a word, wow. The place is incredible. It’s a photographer’s dream subject, so much substance, flavor, style, and color. I was bummed that even though I left the house with what the camera SAID was a fully charged battery that I got here with one that kept flashing low battey warnings. Not one to tempt fate and lose, I tempered my shooting to hit as many areas as possible instead of stacking shot after shot as I had hoped. We’ll be back again.

I’m writing these entries from the slew of underused public computers on floor 5. 132 in all from the number in the brochure. Maybe 30 or so are being used. I’d like to have gone wireless on my iPaq, but the SSIDs that popped up won’t let me connect. Oh well…

The architecture is amazing. There is an automated belt driven dumb waiter that carreis books and what not between floors. You can get a good look at the entrance off of 4th. The floor on the entry level has poetry, words, and letters in relief on the hard wood. Many differenet langauges are presented.

The inside of the elevators, the escalators, and the stairs are all a very bright lime green, while most of the furniture scattered around is a nice muted orange. The colors play very well off of the exposed steel outside, and teh hardy steel floor that is present throughout much of the building.

One of the coolest features is the spiral. It spans floors 6-9 and allows a user to gradually go from area to area of the collection without needing to use stairs, elevator, or escaltor. You can just slowly spiral down a slightly sloping ramp. All along the way, there are floor mats at each bookcase which show the Dewey Decimal number for a very quick glance at where you are.

The kids area was huge. Kelsey was still asleep so we kind of just cruised through, but there was a play area we might check out if she wakes up before we leave. I have a feeling we’ll be able to spend many an afternoon down here reading, playing, and just hanging out.

We’re off to continue our walk which will take us back to the market where I got early bird parking for the day.

I thought it might be fun to go to the Kerry Rally on the Seattle waterfront this morning. Not being ultra political, and not really knowing if I like Kerry or not (it’s a tough toss up this election) I figured it’d be a good chance to see what his mettles were and where he stood on some of the issues.

I decided not to go after standing in the rain for quite a while. Kelsey kept pulling her hood off, and my coat wouldn’t zip up around her sling. It would have been nice to bring her stroller as it has a really nice rain shield, but I was told I could not bring it, or her diaper bag (no bags at all). Come on. What happened to introducing our childern to the ideals o fdemocracy at an early age? Nope, only if you’re willing to get your kid sick could you go. With her health, that’s a chance that is just not worth it.

It’s a shame that 911 has locked down security at these events so tight that a mouse couldn’t get past the line of officers standing by to stop all random bag carriers (which by the way did nothing about the taxis that were gunning through the crosswalks across Alaskan…) I long for a day where you could go and have a damn picnic on the grass while watching and waiting for the President, much less a hopeful candidate.

There was quite a good turnout though. I was very glad to see that despite the rain there were several hundred folks standing, waiting to get in. Those with more fortitude beat me out. Although I gave up on Democracy for a day, there were several hunded others who di dnot. Some of which I hope are just starting to get involved for the first time.

The funniest part was the signature bombadiers. “Are you a registered voter?”. “Why yes, I am.” “Will you sign this sheet for ?” Geez. There were even lines of people for the same referendum following each other, all asking us one after the other the same thing. It got to a point where when this guy asked me if I was registered to vote I just played it safe and said no. My luck, he was there trying to get people to register, not asking for signatures from those already registered.

Some days you just can’t win…

ADDED:
Apparently, ( umbrellas were also later banned…

A while back I posted about my acceptance as a photographer for iStockPhoto.com. Today I looked at my stats and found that one of my first two photos has been downloaded already. It took about 6 days for my first photos to be accepted, and 4 more for the first download.

I am now officially a stock photographer! Granted, it’s not the major leagues, but I’m quite content with being in the AAAAA league for now.

The shot downloaded is called Starfish at Rest. I took it during an early morning low tide on Second Beach along Washington’s Pacific coast last summer. My wife and I were able to get our friends to volunteer to watch our daughter so we could spend our anniversary alone together.

This shot came from that get away where my wife and I reconnected with our past realtionship and in a way re-found the love we had for each other. What a wonderful segue for a shot from this trip to reconnect me with my passion for photography and creativity.

“And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?”

So go the lyrics for “Once in a lifetime” by the Talking Heads.

I’ve been facing this quandry on and off for several years since I got laid off and went on funemployment (I ripped this use of the term from Phil, it just fits so well…)

I had actually been wishing for quite a time that I’d be able to start fresh in a new line of business, but with a wife and mortgage, and kid on the way at the time, that was simply not a luxury I could afford. It’s a shame when your circumstances and societal norms dictate that you continue to proceed in a shoddy work life becasue you feel you have to, and happiness be damned.

That’s when the news came. My position at work had been eliminated. To be quite honest I knew it was coming and am actually surprised it didn’t come sooner. Yes I missed work a lot at first, I’d been so work centric my whole life I didn’t know how to live another way. The biggest thing I missed about this job was my commute. I lived NEXT DOOR to the office building. Oh well.

It was funny, I think my lack of concern at the exit interview wierded them out. Were they expecting people to flip out like Jerry Maguire? They asked if I had anything on my desk that I needed right then (we had to come back for belongings later) I asked for my coat and my cup of coffee (I’d just filled it up, and it seemed such a waste to let it go un-drunk…)

Hence began the “What should I do for the rest of my life?” phase. I read Po Bronson, I read freelancing for dummies, I re-read Project Management and Marketing texts. Then a thought struck me. If I were to switch industries, I’d be making less than I did on funemployment. So I decided to ride the wave and see if I could really get a job in my field. I actually DID try as opposed to the lunchtime alcoholics that don’t show up at WorkSource. The only reason I did this was because it afforded me a lot of time to think and adjust. I’m glad I did, because I’m still in the tech industry, and very glad I didn’t leave it.

For many glorious months I took care of our daughter while looking for work. I got to spend the best parts of her growing up with her every day. Then, I went stark raving mad. Something inside me snapped (maybe it was when she refused to eat from me for 3 months…) and I almost went insane. We used a bit of savings and put her in day care for several months so I could dig in deeper and look for work. No dice, the .Bomb crater was centered around my resume.

This ended abruptly when at a normal well child visit we found out our 12 month old daughter was neutropenic. She lacked the white blood cells that fight off bacterial infections. A 2 week worldwind erupted around us as we worried that our daughter would die before 2 of Leukemia or the like. It turns out that she has a bening version of it. The “cure” is to give her a shot twice a week until it just goes away naturally from 3-30 months from when it first exhibited. Huh? This was ultra freaky and really hard to handle at first. Their first reccommendation to us was to pull her from the cesspool of germs called daycare. Wow. My unemployment had jsut ended and I was freaking out about that. We now had a sick daughter and one income.

The next 6 months were probably the best of my life. Even better than when I stayed at home with Kelsey before this happened. We went everywhere and typically walked 3-5 miles every day to new parts of the city.

Work actually picked up again at this point, I started to gradually get freelance work that I did at night. My first client had me doing cut and paste HTML templates for $10/hour. Quite humbling for the guy who used to make $90K a year before the bubble burst.

It afforded me my first and most important lessons of running your own business though, and that was worth every penny. The raport I established has led to do dozens of word of mouth clients. I’m now actually what you would call moderately busy. Although I’m working full time hours, I’m only billing part time hours to date. I spend quite a bit of time looking for more work as well as doing the work I have. It’s a tough balancing act.

That brings me to now. 31 years old with a gorgeous 20 month old daughter. My biggest complaint about life is that of late I seem to have lost myself. I don’t enjoy the daytimes I have with Kelsey as much as I used to (I still do, but something is wrong somewhere) I also find myself stressing too much about work. One big reason for this is the bountiful amount of crap we have lying around our condo. I have no real office where I can sit down, separate and focus.

I’ve also stopped allowing my creative side to peek out, which is a terrible burden on my ability to balance my life. This has luckily started to change now that I am starting to take stock photos for sale on iStockPhoto.com.

I eat for crap. Kelsey eats well, but I of late have not been eatig well at all. This needs to change for anything else to work. My head is just a total cloud of fog at times, which makes me unable to work even if I want to. The only thing I’m capable of sometmes is just plopping down for reruns of Law and Order. That sucks (not L&O, my lack of energy…

Is there a way to separate work from life? For the first time I love work, but I find myself working too much and not spending enough family time. I’ve fallen back into work centricity. I want to continue to work, I just need to find a way to block it out during the day and on weekends so I can enjoy life too. I may be able to do this easier than most, as all of my clients aer very accommodating of my time and circumstances and have no issues of my working at night. I can still field calls from them during the day, so this keeps them in the comfort zone.

Perhaps as I learn more about business I’ll learn efficienceis that help me automate tasks. I’ve actually found Outlook 2003 to be one of the best tools I’ve ever used. There are so many features in it that I use to make my work life faster. Now if I could only get the time to integrate billing and invoicing into InfoPath or Business Contact Manager, I might be able to shed my current biggest time sink. I don’t have enough clients to require a real accounting system, just one that I can track hours and pop out inovices that is better than an .xls file where I have to create a new worksheet if my tasks for a client go over the one sheet format I downloaded as a template.

Earlier today, Aileen asked if we could get out of town and camp, travel, or hike this weekend. My immediate response was “I don’t know yet, I may have to work”, but now that I sit back, write this, and read it as I go, I think my answer has changed to an unequivocal “yes, we HAVE to leave town this weekend.” I’m going to start looking for a good place to go for 4 days where we can just get away and be a family again. Maybe the ocean is calling us (or me?)? I always felt calmed and clear sitting on the rocks under the Cliff House in San Francisco just staring at the powerful Pacific. We likely won’t be getting that far away, but maybe we can sneak to Ocean Shores, WA or Manzanita, OR.

Time to go back to basics and re-learn what life is all about. If I only pay attention, my daughter can teach me that better than anyone else.

You won’t get plugs and what not here very often, but this one just seems to important to leave off my pages.

When I was growing up there were three of us boys in the neighborhood. Jeff, Jason, and myself. We’ve known each other since first grade. Jeff and I have kept in so-so touch seeing each other a couple of times since college and trading emails, more so lately. I’ve seen Jason only once since college and we just never seem able to get in touch. That doesn’t change the fact that I still consider him one of my best friends. Things like that never change.

Jason and his fiancee are both public shool teachers in the Baltimore, MD metro area. These people are shaping our children’s future. I can think of no more important employment one could seek. Especially considering that teachers in our country get paid slave wages. It’s a travesty that people in a profession so important are treated so poorly.

Here’s the plug: My friend Jason and his fiancee LeeAnne are in the running to win a wedding from their local radio station. What’s more, the public gets to vote for the winner. So take a minute and vote for them, give something back to the people that are teaching our kids and helping make sure America has well balanced, educated children.

Vote for couple Number One (Jason and LeeAnne), vote once or vote often, but at least vote.

Credit card processing fees can add up for a small business. Especially when the majority of purchases are $5 and under (like at coffee shops, smoke shops, delis, etc.)

What have local Seattle merchants done to counteract this avalanche of fees? They’ve started tacking on transaction fees for purchase totals under their arbitrarily choosen minimum purchase amount. Some do this because they don’t care, others do it “because the other merchants are doing it.”

Well, here I am to let you know that this is 100% against the contracts that they have signed which allow them to accept VISA cards. If you attempt to purchase anything with a VISA card, NO merchant is allowed to charge a fee for or require a minimum purchase to run the transaction. If they do, they are running afoul of their merchant account contract and given enough complaints can LOSE their ability to accept credit cards.

Here in Lower Queen Anne alone there are many merchants which are doing this, almost all of which I have reported.

What should you as a consumer do to stop this?

1. Tell the merchant that they are not allowed to do this so they know. Most are just ignorant of the rule and will comply if told (well, not really, just for those who bitch…)
2. Report them to your credit card company. They should have forms which you can use to report these miscreants.
3. If your bank does not have these forms, are too slow to respond, or if you’re just flat out too lazy to contact them for these forms, call VISA at 1.800.VISA.911
4. I’m creating a wiki at CashFree.org (newly registered, please be patient with the DNS…) to promote this, get the word out, and to build up data on these merchants. Visit the Seattle list and help me expand it! (or add your city if this blog entry gets passed beyond our walls.)
5. Don’t shop at these stores until they stop raping their customers.

Let’s take back our money and make Seattle a place where you can truly go cash free. I prefer to not carry any cash, but because of these thieves I have to just in case I need an emergency sundry. I’m not going to pay the fees they’re not allowed to charge, and neither should you!