HTML5

Solutions and Tools for Dealing with Broken Links in Web Pages

By Louis Lazaris / December 1, 2020 / 6 Comments

A couple of months ago a post by Leo Blanchette got to the front page of Hacker News and there was an interesting discussion on dealing with broken links and external content – the main problem being links that become out of date due to paywalls, altered content, or content getting taken down.

I’ve been running this blog since May 2008. If you’ve run a content-driven site for even a fraction of that, you know that link rot is a problem. In this post I’ll go over some of the suggestions in that thread along with some tools to use to check for broken links.

Accessible and Keyboard-Friendly Hamburger Menu + Slide Out Navigation

By Louis Lazaris / June 25, 2020 / 7 Comments

This week I did some research to try to build a hamburger menu that opens a slide-out navigation panel, a common design pattern nowadays. But I wanted to ensure the whole thing was keyboard-friendly and as accessible as possible.

I’m not 100% sure what I’ve come up with is the most accessible solution, but I did consult a number of decent sources on building accessible navigation menus like these. I also did some rudimentary testing using the free NVDA screen reader, to ensure there are no major problems.

On Leading and Trailing Spaces in HTML Attribute Values

By Louis Lazaris / May 2, 2018 / 4 Comments

In most cases, you should not use a leading or trailing space in an HTML attribute value. For example, if you add a leading or trailing space to an ID attribute, you wouldn’t be able to hook into that value in CSS using the ID selector (not that you use IDs as selectors, right?):

This happens because spaces are not allowed in an ID selector. But interestingly, there is a way around that using CSS’s attribute selector:

HTML5’s Global `hidden` Attribute

By Louis Lazaris / April 24, 2018 / 6 Comments

As you probably know, there are a number of HTML attributes that are considered global because they can be applied to any HTML element. Common examples include class, id, style, and tabindex.

One that was added a number of years ago in HTML5, and you may have forgotten about, is used on two elements in the following code:

Using the `for` Attribute on the `output` Element in HTML5

By Louis Lazaris / April 17, 2018 / 0 comments

There are two things here that you’re probably already aware of. First, HTML includes an <output> element that allows you to display the “result of a calculation”. It’s a form element and it’s been around for some time, having been added in HTML5.

The other thing you’re likely to be aware of is that the for attribute is normally used on the <label> element to associate a <label> with a form element. This aids accessibility and usability, as you’ve probably discovered as both a developer and a user. But interestingly, the for attribute can also be used on the <output> element:

onchange vs. oninput for Range Sliders

By Louis Lazaris / October 14, 2014 / 9 Comments

A common UI pattern for a range slider is to allow the user to move the slider and display the value of it somewhere on the page, changing the displayed value as the user moves the slider.

I think the expected behaviour in such a case is that the value should display instantly, as the user is moving the slider, rather than the page waiting for the slider to finish moving before the displayed value is updated. I suppose there could be cases where you prefer a delay over instant results, but I think the expected behaviour is to display the results instantly.

As you’ll see in the videos below and in your own testing, the behaviour of the input event compared to the change event is not exactly the same in different browsers when applied to a range slider.

IDs Will Not Make Your Documents More Semantic

By Louis Lazaris / November 26, 2012 / 37 Comments

Before I get into the meat of this post, I’ll just provide some context. Last week, Harry Roberts posted a fantastic article discussing his view of bad CSS. In that article, as he’s done before, he disourages the use of IDs as selectors.

In response, Jeffrey Zeldman tried to defend the use of ID selectors. I posted a few comments in response to Jeffrey and another commenter, explaining why their views were wrong.

A Call For Better Fragment Identifiers

By Louis Lazaris / February 2, 2012 / 11 Comments

Where would the web be without links? Links are what hold together what we know as the World Wide Web. Without links, the World Wide Web would be more appropriately called the World Wide Set Of Unrelated Pages, or, incidentally, WWSOUP.

While it’s great how simple and effective the process is of “linking” pages together, I think there’s room for improvement.

Some HTML5 Resources Worth Checking Out

By Louis Lazaris / December 14, 2011 / 6 Comments

As the weeks go by, I find tons of new developer resources, tools, and things worth looking into.

I wrote a similar roundup of JavaScript resources, so this time I’m covering stuff related to what we commonly call “HTML5” (even though a lot of this stuff could easily fall under a “JavaScript” umbrella too).

Is HTML5 Good for SEO?

By Louis Lazaris / November 14, 2011 / 37 Comments

This is a question that has been answered in a number of different places. Unfortunately, the answers in some instances have not been good ones. In fact, they’ve either been way too optimistic and/or presumptuous — or else just downright wrong.

Also, when we use the term “HTML5”, what exactly are we referring to? HTML5 covers a number of different features and technologies, some of which have nothing to do with SEO. So, generally speaking, when people ask this question, they’re usually referring to HTML5’s new semantic elements. So, I’ll primarily focus on those here.